Friday Carousel — 01.15.10


photo credit

Hello, friends! Welcome to this week’s edition of Evolution’s Friday Carousel. I hope that your New Year is off to a beautiful beginning. We are halfway through the first month of a brand new decade. How exciting? Have you defined your goals yet — both long and short term? If not, get to it! This is your chance to start fresh, new; to begin living the life of your dreams.

That said, let’s have a look at this week’s links. Shall we?

1. 25 Questions That Provoke Thought: I loved these questions from marcand angel.com. A lot of them are truly thought-provoking. Perfect way to get your mental juices flowing as we head into the vast wilderness that is 2010. My favorite question is—

“Is it crazier to choose to be poor or to spend 40 years of your life hating 40 hours a week?”

2. What’s in Your Garbage & Start the Year Squeaky Clean With These Top Detox Foods: I loved both of these posts from epicself.com. The garbage post really made me think twice about my contributions to our ever-growing pollution problems. And the detox foods post contains some really good ideas for detox foods, which I think we can all use after this past holiday season. I know I can!

3. 14 Tips for Getting More Sleep & Why It Matters: You may have noticed that it was a bit quiet around here last week, why, you ask. I suffered through an awful bout of insomnia! I went 5 days straight on less than 3 hours of sleep per night. It was awful. Luckily, I’ve gotten back on track this week, but sleep deprivation is no joke. I’ve written about it before, and this post from thehappinessproject.com has a bunch of really good advice, too.

4. One Foolproof Trick to Blast Writer’s Block: I don’t know how many of you have blogs of your own, but I’ll best a lot of you do. It seems to be a given for most people today! Even if you don’t have a blog, you probably write at some point in your daily life, whether at the office or just letters to family & friends. I really liked this post from Copyblogger. It’s got some really solid advice to beating your writer’s block.

5. The World On Your Shoulders: Taking a trip anytime soon? This post is a must-read guide to minimalist packing!

6. 101 Most Inspiring Quotes Part 2: I love quotes and I love inspirations, this post is a Win-Win!

7. The Amish & Their Ability to Get Rid of Distractions & Amish Hackers: It’s no secret that I have been undergoing a major lifestyle revision over the past year. I have slowly been moving toward minimalism and financial independence. Well, who better to run to for inspiration that the Masters of Minimalism— The Amish! I loved these articles about Amish, technology, and their ability to do without, really inspirational.

8. Incomplete Manifesto for Growth: 43 solid pieces of advice, my personal favorite—

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.”

9. The End of Procrastination: Whether you’ve been putting off implementing your new site’s Word Press design *cough, cough* or just haven’t gotten ’round to cleaning the kitchen floors in awhile, this post is for you. Stop thinking, start doing!

10. Today’s Top 9 Easy Ways to Personal Reinvention: And last but certainly not least, every single day we have the ability to reinvent ourselves. That is the beauty of life! Check out this post for some easy ways to do it.

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” —John Wayne

—

Have a beautiful weekend! Spread love & light where ever you may go.

you may also like

  • 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.

    ———————————————

    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!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *