Carousel — 07.23.10

1. Eating on the Road: Local Food and Long Distance Cravings: I have fallen so in love with this blog.

Part of the experience of traveling is giving up the familiar comforts of home and seeing everything from a new perspective. It’s awkward and frustrating but also brilliant and life changing.

2. You’ve Got to Serve Yourself: Brandon is biking from Berlin to Beijing and sharing his journey along the way. He is an incredible mixture of spiritual & down-to-earth. I eagerly await all of his posts from the road.

3. The secret life of my ugly self: Do you ever have “ugly” days? You know, those days when you look in the mirror and no matter what you do you just look like shit? Yea, I have those too. I loved this post. Read it to find out how to accept & embrace your ugly days—for good.

4. Why Travel and Being a Girl Rocks: Travel? Being a girl? Two of my favourite things! This is a must-read for female travelers & the men who travel with them.

5. I trusted my gut and got screwed & Why can’t I get a girlfriend?: I’ve always loved reading advice columns. There is something intriguing & voyeuristic about hearing other people’s problems. Hearing how the advice-givers will respond is the cherry on top.

6. Living Abroad For Less Than $1000 Per Month: I know that I link to Earl’s blog a lot, but I can’t help it. He is a super-sweet guy with the most amazing stories to tell. In this post he talks about all of the different places around the world where he’s lived for dirt cheap. If you’ve been wanting to travel but have been using money as an excuse, read this post!

7. Sight Unseen – Investing Time Or Money With Less Info:

The moment you stop saying “this sucks” and start saying “I want _____” you’re laying a path for yourself.

8. The Sweet Sting of Rejection: Been rejected, burned, cast aside, rebuffed, or shunned recently? Yes? You should read this post. No? You should still read this post. Learn how to accept & embrace rejection with grace.

9. If You Want to Survive Out Here, You’ve Got to Know Where Your Towel Is: Colin has been road-tripping it across the US for awhile now. His tried & true advice from his adventures on the road are priceless.

Are you open to the possibility that – under the right circumstances – a big wad of toilet paper can look a whole lot like a towel?

10. Passive Aggressive Notes : This site describes itself as: Painfully polite and hilariously hostile writings from shared spaces all over the world. Alright, I am probably the world’s biggest advocate against passive aggressive behavior, but this is just hysterical!

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  • Carousel — 04.02.10

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

    ———————–

    “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” —Lao Tzu

    1. The Rebel’s Manifesto: “1. Do the opposite of what you were taught in school.” This is just chock-full of superb advice.

    2. My Running Mantra: What lovely inspiration!

    3. 18 Tips on how to pack for a trip, how to travel light, how to have fun in airports (where “trip” also equals “life”): This post delivers precisely what the title promises & then some…

    4. Post Secret: If you are one of the ten people left on Earth that isn’t following Post Secret, then I suggest you start now. 😉 PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. It is completely ad-free & gets updated every Sunday. It’s incredible.

    5. A critical message about food. Yes, it is a bit lengthy, but worth every moment of your time.

    Additionally, last week I watched Food, Inc. and to say that my perception about food is drastically altered would be a catastrophic understatement. Every single person living in the USA (perhaps others, too) must watch this film.

    6. A happy mayor: “Not only is Mayor Hazel McCallionhappy of the City of Mississauga in Canada happy at work, she is also 88 years old, has been elected 11 times, has a 91% approval rating AND has kept her city debt-free.” Dear Heaven: Give me a fraction of this woman’s health, enthusiasm, and spirit! I’ll be set forever.

    7. The Crushing Problem of Student Debt: Excellent post about the growing problem of student loan debt faced by so many Americans. This is an excellent follow-up to my two part series about my own financial journey.

    8. Overcoming Fear: I write about overcoming fear quite a bit here; but every now & then it is nice to hear someone else’s perspective on the subject. I really enjoyed this post about overcoming fear, particularly Jared’s personal story about where he allowed fear to take him in his own life.

    9. 25 Beautifully Illustrated Thought-Provoking Questions: “Are you holding onto something that you need to let go of?” Get prepared to think.

    10. Renegade Health Care Reform: Don’t worry, I haven’t gone all political on you! Just click it. I’m sure you’ll agree, no matter which side of the fence you’re standing on.

    11. The Ultimate Minimalist: 5 Powerful Lessons You Can Learn From Gandhi: Really simple, really powerful. This is the most inspired I’ve been by a “minimalism” post in awhile (and I read a lot of them, friends!).

    ———————–

    To all of my friends that celebrate Easter, may your Easter be filled with love & light. To all of my friends who do not, may your weekend be full of passion & grace. xo

  • Carousel — 04.09.10

    Hello Dear Readers & happy Friday! It’s been a bit quiet around here this week because I am preparing for vacation. Yahoo! I leave tomorrow morning and will be returning late next week. You will see a couple of guest posts during that time (if I can properly set that up in WordPress) and a guest post from me will be posted over at a friend’s blog. So keep your eyes open for those things, but my apologies in advance as I will not be replying to comments or emails because…

    I plan to be completely disconnected during my trip. That means no Blackberry, Twitter, Facebook, Web, Foursquare, and so on. I need a break from “virtual reality”, my friends. 😉 In fact, we all do from time to time!

    That said, let’s move on to this week’s Carousel. I’ve got some very sweet goodies to share with you this week.

    ———————–

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

    1. Coming across hurting people: Every now & again, I come across a piece that touches me in a deep, profound way. Usually the piece is not too long, but it is always powerful and tugs at my heart strings in a soft, yet poignant way.

    This blog post is one of those pieces. If you read nothing else from this week’s Carousel, read this.

    2. Eco-Bootcamp: The sustainable, savvy heroines over at Your Daily Thread have kicked off a month long going green boot camp in honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22nd. Their goal is to turn Eco-zeros, to Eco-heroes even if you’ve never recycled before.

    3. Soda: A Sin We Sip Instead of Smoke? and Junk food ‘as addictive as heroin and smoking’: I am extremely passionate about healthy living & lifestyles. My passion has been really intense lately as I become increasingly aware of the disturbing truths about modern “food”.

    I view the recent elimination of sugary beverages (soda) from school systems as a huge triumph. I look forward to the continuation of this important trend. Education and awareness is crucial.

    4. create luck, embrace chance & tune in to your serendipity: What is it about lucky people? Have they all got horseshoes tucked into their backsides? 🙂 Amber doesn’t think so & neither do I.

    5. 7 Sources of Deep Clutter: Some great advice about how to eliminate the “shoulds, have-tos, and people-pleasing” bad habits that are cluttering your life & soul.

    (And as a side note, the Good Life Zen blog is really fantastic. Each post is insightful, inspirational, and well-written.)

    6. Remaining Calm in Stressful Situations: I like this post because it teaches us something that we can all benefit from (remaining calm) but I love it because it reminds us of something even more important — that mental/emotional stress does cause physical illness.

    7. 40 Belief-Shaking Remarks From a Ruthless Nonconformist: Ah, yes! We can always count on Friedrich Nietzsche to obliterate the complacent, feel-good beliefs that we hold about ourselves. This collection of quotes will stir your pot and get your wheels spinning.

    8. The Top 10 Online Habits That Make My Life Simpler: If you’re like me—meaning you spend several hours a day online—then you know that the Web can be the biggest time-vacuum known to man (if you let it). This post lists lots of simple yet effective ways that will help you make the most of your precious time spent online.

    9. Why You Should Be More Decisive: Truth: I am an extremely indecisive woman by nature. Those closest to me will tell you this.

    I have trouble deciding upon the simplest of things—which restaurant to visit, which shirt to wear, which road to take, whether or not to put salt on my food, which movie to watch, and so on. Well, a couple of years ago I found an ingenious method for dealing with this problem: I started flipping a coin! Yes, that’s my secret.

    While the coin-flipping model has worked well for me, I still really enjoyed this post. It teaches us why some people have so much trouble being decisive in today’s world and why it is really important that we become more decisive overall. Perhaps I should stop relying so heavily on the coin and start aiming to be more decisive myself…

    10. How To Fund Your Travels With Creativity: I have several friends who are currently living outside of the United States, seeing the world, gaining incredible life experience, and living the lives of their dreams. If you want to know how 95% of them are doing it, read this post. It will tell you exactly what they’re doing and how you can do it too.

    ———————–

    That’s it for this week. I’ll see you all on the other side.

    In love & light,
    Dena

14 Comments

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  10. Awesome list Dena! And that is one of the most amazing pics of Chicago I have ever seen! I’m proud to be a Chicagoan! Woo hoo! Anyways I’ve seen 3 of these epic posts and couldn’t agree more of their deserving on this list. The other 7 are equally deserving! Good stuff Dena!

    Reply

    1. Mark – Hey there! Thank you so much for stopping by. I’m really glad that you enjoyed the posts and the photograph of Chicago. Isn’t it just gorgeous. Going to head over to Twitter and follow you there. Look forward to staying connected.

      Reply
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  13. Hey Dena, yeah the post was great. I just got finished trolling through all posts and link tangents. And seriously one of best pics of Chicago I’ve seen! Thanks for the twitter follow!

    Reply

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