Friday Carousel – 11.27.09

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Happy (Day After) Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers and Happy Day to the rest of my readers! I had a positively amazing Thanksgiving with family & friends; I am so grateful. Speaking of gratitude,
I count my blessings every single day when I wake up in the morning & when I go to sleep at night. This practice humbles & strengthens me. I urge you to do the same. We have so much to be thankful for.

…And now on to this week’s Friday Carousel!

    “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”–JFK

  1. How We Can Help Alleviate World Poverty in Three Easy Steps: The lastest post from Zen Habits and a topic near and dear to my heart.

    there are two points to remember when we think about global problems:

    1. Every action counts;
    2. We are not alone.

  2. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television: From Mother Earth News. Television can be a devil. While there is much good to be gained from it, I think that for most people it is a waste, a sucker of energy, life, and happiness. If I had to classify myself, I’d be *pro-books* and *anti-television*.

    3. “We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.” –William Hazlitt

  3. The Benefits of Pissing People Off: It is no secret that I practice kindness as my religion; but I am also a firm believer that- You can please some of the people some of the time; but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. I really enjoyed this post by Tim Ferriss.

    By facing the fire early and often, we ensure the confidence and breathing room later to do bigger and better things.

  4. From Chelsea Nico.
  5. The Warrior of Light Dances: My latest inspiration from Paulo Coelho’s blog.

    The warrior is careful with people who think they can control the world, determine their own steps, and are certain that they know the right path. They are always so confident in their own capacity of decision that they do not realize the irony with which fate writes everyone’s life.

  6. Live and Let Live: 9 Ways of Letting Go: I absolutely love this post from my friend Jard at Spiritual Zen. Two of my favorite points-

    Be Understanding Rather Than Understood and Stop Being a Victim.

Please share your own links in the comments section. Have a wonderful weekend! Remember to spread love & light wherever you go.

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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.

    ———————————————

    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 — 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

4 Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing Dena.

    I disagree strongly with Tim's post. The goal isn't to piss people off, it's to be beyond what other people will think, say, or do, in reponse to you being you.

    The *really* successful people could care less if they piss people off most of the time. They devote themselves to a purpose.

    Who cares what others think about what you do?

    Reply

  2. I'm loving your Friday Carousels! (And that opening picture is awesome, btw)

    Thanks for showing me some articles that I have missed this week… Those two first points from Leo's post are so moving… 1) Every action counts and 2) We are not alone.
    🙂
    Karen

    Reply

  3. I was at first taken back by Tim's post too (a great provoking headline, no?) but the message he's trying to convey was for us to not fear doing remarkable things.
    Have a great day Dena!

    Reply

  4. @Ryan – I appreciate your feedback. When I read Tim's article, it actually seemed to be mostly in complete agreement with your thoughts. 🙂

    @Karen – I am glad that you liked them. Yes, we can always count on Leo for some inspiration.

    @Ken – Yes, yes! That is exactly the point. I think he was trying to grab attention with that headline but at its core the article was about doing remarklable things.

    Reply

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