Category Archives: Austin Kleon

Something Good

7 Replies

1. Why You Need to Stop Bragging About How Busy You Are from Fast Company.

2. The Not List from Rachel Cole. Rachel has a new Intuitive Eating Guided Reading Group starting in mid-May.

3. From Seth Godin: “How do I get rid of the fear?” and The bottomless pit of pleasing strangers and They’re your words, choose them.

4. Show Your Work! – SXSW Interactive 2014, a talk by Austin Kleon.

5. Here Are The 31 Best Incidents Of Irony Ever Photographed. #9 Must Be Some Kind Of Cruel Joke. from Viral Nova.

6. Jeff Oaks is on a break from teaching, so he’s writing all kinds of good stuff. For example, Writing/Dreams and April: some notes.

7. 10 Ways to Own Less from Be More With Less.

8. A Magical Miniature World Of Snails By Vyacheslav Mishchenko on Bored Panda.

9. Kids From All Around The World Show Off Their Favorite Toys In Disarming Photo Series on Huffington Post.

10. Open Letter to Dr. Oz from be nourished.

10. Mabel Magazine, “is a print magazine that is here to tell real stories about making a living and creating a life.” I have a piece in the first issue, the theme of which is “beginnings.” I think Mabel’s going to be a good thing.

11. 27 Hysterical Haircuts. #6 Made Me Cringe. on the San Francisco Globe. We all do such silly things sometimes.

12. 10 Ways to Do What You Don’t Want to Do on Zen Habits.

13. Heartwarming Thai Commercial – Thai Good Stories By Linaloved. Of everything on this list, this just might be the very best.

14. How a Rescue Dog from Taiwan and Baby Boy from LA became Best Friends on Twisted Sifter.

15. The Worst Thing That Can Happen Rarely Does from Chris Guillebeau.

16. Shared on the Chookooloonks This Was a Good Week list: Artist Rachel Sussman Photographs the Oldest Living Things in the World before They Vanish and the teeniest, tiniest.

17. A sweet Easter poem from James Broughton, “Easter Exultet.”

Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!

18. being enough from Pia Jane Bijkerk.

19. Opening the Creative Channel with Andrea Scher and Laurie Wagner on Simply Celebrate.

20. Truthbombs from Danielle LaPorte: “Put down your shield and stand in the rain of blessings,” and “You will always be too much of something for someone. Be yourself anyway.”

21. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Many of our escapes are involuntary: addiction and dissociating from painful feelings are two examples. Anyone who has worked with a strong addiction—compulsive eating, compulsive sex, abuse of substances, explosive anger, or any other behavior that’s out of control—knows that when the urge comes on it’s irresistible. The seduction is too strong. So we train again and again in less highly charged situations in which the urge is present but not so overwhelming. By training with everyday irritations, we develop the knack of refraining when the going gets rough. It takes patience and an understanding of how we’re hurting ourselves not to continue taking the same old escape route of speaking or acting out.

22. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel, a practice,

Take a moment to sit comfortably. Plant your feet on the floor. Settle into your breath, slowly and intentionally.

Feel into your body as you run your mind over the content of your day – your schedule, your obligations, your desire for self-care.

Where are you craving for permission?

Let any answer that comes guide you into your day.

Let it be simple, but follow through.

Know that every time you pause, take stock, and move forward with your own spirit, heart, and need in mind, you are working to feel a little more at home in your life.

23. Watching these two old women fly for the first time is pure gold on Sploid.

24. Wisdom from A Conversation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Parabola, in which he says,

…if you utilize obstacles properly, then it strengthens your courage, and it also gives you more intelligence, more wisdom. Because there is obstacle, you make attempt; so have to think, have to try something. Have to try certain way; so this gives strength and also wisdom and intelligence. If you use them in wrong way, then discourage, failure, depression.

25. The Metric of More from Paul Jarvis.

Something Good

2 Replies

1. These Are Photos Of Childrens Bedrooms. But They Represent Something Much, Much More. on Pulptastic.

2. Wisdom from Tulku Thondup,

It can be so empowering for us to understand, even on a conceptual level, that we are enlightened in our true nature. We may say, ‘‘Such a wonderful state of mind seems so far beyond me, why should I even think about it?’’

The reason I like to remind people about their perfect nature is that this can encourage us. Yes, it’s true that our grasping often obscures this nature. But the good news is that we already have what is needed to be peaceful and happy. By training our minds through meditation and developing the right attitudes in life, we can bring out what is already there. We can improve ourselves and be happier and healthier in our minds.

3. The 7 c’s: positive benefits of keeping a journal from Positively Present.

4. Good stuff from Be More With Less: 5% Less and 5 Ways to Make Anything Easier.

5. Interview with Austin Kleon on The Great Discontent. Austin really is one of my favorite creatives. This week he also shared Interview with A Total Disruption, another interview with him, and this video of the band Future Islands, new music I’m digging.

6. Wonderful prank turns waitress’ shift into the best day of her life. I don’t like April Fool’s Day or most pranks. I think they are mean. But this one, I can get behind.

7. “Our words collided with the story,” a 365 Docobites about one of my favorite poets, Maya Stein, and her Typewriter II project.

8. You Know You Are a Perfectionist When… on McSweeney’s.

9. Good stuff from Zen Habits: You’ll Be OK and The Most Important Two Minutes of Your Life.

10. 33 First-World Anarchists Who Don’t Care About Your Rules on Bored Panda.

11. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel,

Women, myself included, have this phenomenal tendency to shrink, making themselves small in the presence of others and brimming with inconvenient needs and hungers.

Today I implore you to join me in stretching your arms out wide and spinning around, carving out your sacred space in this world. Then, holding that space about you as you move around your day, in your mind and in your heart.

Know this: You are deserving of your needs, no matter how large or small. You are deserving of taking up your own corner of this world. You are deserving of your own love and affection.

Make room for yourself. Stand in your truths.

You can take up all the space that you need.

12. 27 Struggles Only Dog Owners Would Understand on {Life}Buzz.

13. Wisdom from Anne Lamott on Facebook,

This business of being a human being is infinitely more fraught than I was led to believe. When my son Sam figured out at 7 years old that he and I were not going to die at the exact same moment, he said, “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have agreed to be born.” That says it for me. It’s hard here, and weird. The greatness of love and laughter, the pain of loss, the bearing of one another’s burdens, are all mixed up, like the crazy catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

14. Wisdom from Mornings at Blackwater by Mary Oliver,

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,

or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live

your life.

15. Shared by SF Girl by Bay on her Friday Finds post: Love House and Sea salt chocolate chip cookies recipe.

16. Wisdom from Rumi, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

17. 28 Awe Inspiring Photos That Prove Just How Cool Mother Nature Is on True Activist.

18. 9 Things to Stop Doing During Hard Times from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

19. Sometimes life is about becoming unstuck, and that’s it from Renegade Mothering. This is the kind of post that makes me mad I didn’t write it, it’s that good.

20. Wisdom from Gwyn Michael, “However long I last I thank you.“