Friday Carousel — 01.29.10

Bonjour, darlings! I am so happy that you’ve made it to check out this week’s Friday Carousel. Can you believe that January is almost over already? We are 1/12th of the way through 2010!

Here is some inspiration & motivation to get your weekend off to a great start. Enjoy.

1. 50 Ways To Put The Light Back In Your Heart: Winter blues got you down? This list is full of inspiration to put a smile back on your face.

“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” —Carlos Castaneda

2. 5 Creative Ways to Upsize Your Life by Downsizing: I absolutely loved this post, so much so that I’ve been planning a similar post for awhile now. More minimalism excellence. Expect to see my version soon.

3. Back Your Passion and Achieve Success!: Excellent advice for anyone who is trying to make a career move or decision.

4. Too Much Credit: A Stunning Graphic on Personal Loans & Credit Cards: The title of this post says it all! These are some really amazing (unfortunate) stats about credit in the US.

5. Clean Water for Ethiopia: Chris Guillebeau wants to raise a minimum of $500,000 for water wells in Ethiopia over the next 18 months. What an awesome goal!

6. Why I Parted Ways With My Best Friend of 10 Years: This post hit close to home for me. A couple of years ago I ended a best friendship after 15 years. It was hard, but as you’ll read, sometimes it is the right thing to do.

7. Forget About World Peace: A more realistic approach to spreading peace throughout the world.

“Love is the beginning of the journey, its end, and the journey itself.” —Deepak Chopra

8. 5 Places To Visit This Decade: Planning to do some traveling this decade? Have a look at this article from Huffington Post, it’s full of gorgeous pictures & spectacular travel ideas.

9. Common Thinking Traps – Correlation and Causation: This post shines some light on why we should not make assumptions. Just because A happened does not mean that B will inevitably happen and so forth. Interesting perspective and food for thought.

10. Make Your Company Pay for Volunteering: I actually stumbled upon this article while doing some personal research for the company that I work for. I’ve long thought that companies can benefit from allowing & encouraging their employees to volunteer. This article talks in some more detail about why it’s such a great idea.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” –Plato

Enjoy the Wolf Moon tonight. I hope to meet some of you in the woods a-howling. ♥

photo credit

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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.

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    “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!).

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    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 — 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!

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