Category Archives: Be More with Less

Something Good

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1. Feast, “an intensive 3-month program for women who want to come home to themselves, make peace with food, and feast on their lives.” I submitted my application about 20 minutes after Rachel opened, that’s how ready I am for this. She’s taking applications now, but just for this week and there are only 30 spots in this session. Other good stuff from Rachel: Go closer and Doing your best.

2. ZenPen ecourse, “Body-Based Writing for Healing, Transformation, and Personal Growth.” It starts today, so there’s still time to sign up for the latest session.

3. The lists I look at every week for inspiration:

4. Story Swap at the Lyric Cinema Cafe. Looks fun.

5. Wisdom from Clarissa Pinkola Estes,

[W}e all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking.

6. Wisdom from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.”

7. This is a little different, something I’m offering to you because I don’t agree with it, but I find it and my disagreement very interesting, worth contemplating: This is why you shouldn’t take people’s Facebook lives seriously.

8. One Model Tried On 10 Different Pairs Of Size 16 Jeans And This Is What They Looked Like on BuzzFeed.

9. Realistic New Year’s Resolutions on The Awl.

10. 10 Ways to Turn Off Your Worries on Psychology Today.

11. The Word from Susannah Conway. We both chose “nourish” as our word this year.

12. Future self, wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook.

13. Responding to Violence and Insanity (one Buddhist’s perspective) from Susan Piver.

14. Wisdom from Andre Gide, “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

15. 27 Reasons Why I Can Never Be a Writer on McSweeney’s.

16. On Expectations (and the promise of 2015) from Sandi Amorim.

17. Why dreaming big almost cost me my self from Jennifer Louden, who has a gorgeous new website design.

18. My wish for your 2015, a poem from Cynthia Morris, who also has a gorgeous new website design.

19. A Note from the Universe, “I know this may come as somewhat of a shock, Jill, but of your innumerable and extraordinary gifts, one day you’ll consider your present day challenges as the greatest of them all. Trust me.”

20. Margaret Atwood’s charming Reddit AMA.

21. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel.

22. the thrive portraits from Chookooloonks.

23. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club, “life is much too short to ever stick around a person who makes you feel like you are difficult to love.” (Unless of course the person is you, and then you’ve got to figure that shit out).

24. Stop Waiting To Love Yourself Because Of Your Weight on Rebelle Society.

25. Watch Jimmy Fallon learn he totally missed Nicole Kidman’s decade-old come-on.

26. Five things the diet industry doesn’t want you to know in 2015.

27. Overcoming Objections to Body Acceptance from Isabel Foxen Duke.

28. My Indecorous Word of the Year from Laura Simms.

29. belonging to the body from lists & letters.

30. From Addicted Teen to Acclaimed Therapist: The Inside Story on the Good Life Project.

31. A Boy Said She Was Too Ugly To Touch. She Believed It For 10 Years. Here’s What She Has To Say Now. on Upworthy, from Soul Pancake.

32. Why “I am enough” isn’t enough on Life with Lucia.

33. Kill Inner Clutter Before it Kills You on Be More with Less.

34. Commuters push train off man whose leg became trapped between carriage and platform. This is who we are.

35. America, please stop raising assholes on Renegade Mothering.

36. To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This on The New York Times. And a related article that includes the 36 questions the author references, No. 37: Big Wedding or Small?

37. Self-Refinement Through the Wisdom of the Ages: 15 Resolutions for 2015 from Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds on Brain Pickings.

Something Good

4 Replies
Image by Eric

Image by Eric

1. Feast with Rachel Cole. I can’t wait to get started. I’m so ready.

2. Transformation, and Against Fearlessness, wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook.

3. happy 10th birthday, 37days! from Patti Digh.

4. The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur from The Atlantic.

5. Uncertainty is not the same thing as risk from Seth Godin.

6. Swallowing your words, paying rent in hell, and maintaining appearances. Why we make (unhealthy) compromises from Danielle LaPorte.

7. Universal Letter Writing Week: January 8 – 14, 2015 hosted by Alexandra Franzen.

8. Wisdom from Kavita Ramdas,

We need more women that are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free.

9. Take A Look Inside This Luxury, 280 Square Foot ‘Tiny House’ In Oregon. And, This Gorgeous Zen-Like Tiny House Spans Generations.

10. Wisdom from Curvy Yoga.

11. YOU Are Not Your Food Plan from Sue Ann Gleason, an older post that is worth another look.

12. Savor from Just Lara, also an older post that is worth a read.

13. Diet Culture: An Introduction & Condemnation. Word.

14. 2014: The year in review from Susannah Conway.

15. Roundup: Books for the soul from The Chicago Tribune. I especially like the part about Anne Lamott.

16. 2015 Resolution For Writers: Be Big (And Then, Be Small) on Terrible Minds.

17. Six ways of compassionate living, (also known as the six Paramitas), wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Generosity. Giving as a path of learning to let go.
Discipline. Training in not causing harm in a way that is daring and flexible.
Patience. Training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed. If waking up takes forever, still we go moment by moment, giving up all hope of fruition and enjoying the process.
Joyful enthusiasm. Letting go of our perfectionism and connecting with the living quality of every moment.
Meditation. Training in coming back to being right here with gentleness and precision.
Prajna (or transcendent wisdom). Cultivating an open, inquiring mind.

18. A wonderful Zen koan: Student: “I’m reaching for the light, please help me.”
Teacher: “Forget about the light. Give me the reaching.”

19. Learning To Love Your Life, As It Is, from Mara Glatzel.

20. The 4 Things I Learned On A 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat on Thought Catalog.

21. I Come to This Year, a poem from Jonathan Fields.

22. A touch of joy for your New Year from Jamie Greenwood.

23. A wonder-filled new year from Christina Rosalie.

24. New Year’s Wishes and gifts from Neil Gaiman.

25. New Year, Not-New Me by Stacy Morrison.

26. Bad Luck of Random Mutations Plays Predominant Role in Cancer, Study Shows. Next time I hear someone say stress or using plastic containers or eating dairy causes cancer, instead of punching them in the face I’ll give them the link to this. (Confession: having lost loved ones to cancer, it makes me so mad when I hear anyone trying to assign blame solely to the choices people make — even though I understand they do it to feel safe because it would mean all they have to do to avoid the hell that is cancer would be to make the “right” choices, because it would mean we can control what happens to us).

27. On becoming silent… from Erica Staab.

28. Good stuff from Austin Kleon: My morning routine and How to read more.

29. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,

I’d spent so many years believing that when I lost weight, I would turn into a different person — an easygoing, thick-haired, long-legged, Angelina Jolie type — that it took me awhile to get used to the thinner version of the same old me. But then I realized that I had a life that no one else could have. I stopped writing poetry (which I was terrible at) and started writing what only I could write — my books about emotional eating from a personal perspective. When I gave up wanting to have a life that wasn’t my own, I was able to grow into the life that was already mine, waiting for me to see, inhabit, and live it.

Try this experiment: Instead of waiting to be thin to be happy, try being happy right now. Live as if you were already thin, as if you liked yourself, as if you chose to have the life you have right now.

My bet is that you will discover the real It thing: the riches of your own life that were yours all along.

30. Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying on The Rumpus. Heartbreaking, but so beautifully written and honest — the best kind of writing.

31. Gracias a La Vida (Cover) by Daniela Andrade. Such beautiful lyrics.

32. 6 Quotes & Images to Inspire Simplicity from Be More With Less.

33. Photo Doggies for Anthony, a really easy way to send someone who needs it some love.

34. Tweeting my way through the Himalayas by Paul Jarvis.

35. A Tragic Death Leads to a Nonprofit to Help Rescue Stray Pine Ridge Dogs. I love Pine Ridge kids. I love Pine Ridge dogs. I love helping both. Jayla Marie Rodriguez died on my birthday. This breaks my heart, but gives me a way to help, and I’m grateful for that.

36. 10 Ways to Say ‘No’ That Won’t Damage Business or Relationships.

37. Becoming One With Dharma by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.