Category Archives: Brain Pickings

Something Good

elkhorn19
1. This photo on Unsplash is how I want to age, near the ocean, taking long walks and sitting in stillness, (although, where’s my dog?). It reminds me of poet Mary Oliver. And I still can’t get over this website, Unsplash, “All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash.” And the photos are amazing!

2. On simplifying from Paul Jarvis.

3. The New Normal: Pieces of Grief by Stephanie Wittels Wachs.

4. Every marketing challenge revolves around these questions from Seth Godin.

5. Addiction Is a Disease of Free Will.

6. Wisdom from Hafiz,

I wish I could show you
when you are lonely
or in darkness
the astonishing light
of your own being.

7. When You Feel Pressured and Overwhelmed by Possibilities on Tiny Buddha.

8. money talks with mary anne radmacher by Sherry Belul.

9. Good stuff from Chookooloonks this was a good week list: Portrait of a Quiet Conference Leader and Finding fulfillment.

10. “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” ~Mexican proverb

11. YES! You Can Make Friends As An Adult! (And Exploding Other Limiting Beliefs), Shared on Rowdy Kittens Happy Links list.

12. The 19 Funniest Tweets From Women This Week. This series makes me laugh.

13. Wisdom from Chögyam Trungpa,

Being a buddha is not so much being a great scholar who knows all about everything and therefore is enlightened. Being a buddha, being enlightened, is actually being able to tune our mind into that state of being which already exists, which is already liberated, a long time ago.

14. The Dalai Lama’s Daily Routine and Information Diet on Brain Pickings.

15. Jon Stewart Blasts ‘A**hole’ Texas Officer For Pool Party Gone Bad.

16. Brittany Gibbons is the Bomb.

17. He Has A Bad Stutter, But When He Does His Stand Up Act, He’s A Star!

18. Why We Have to #SayHerName After McKinney.

19. Good stuff from Hello Giggles: Jemima Kirke just filled our lives with body positivity wisdom, and This 23-year-old is writing an Instagram memoir—and we’re already hooked, and Miley Cyrus’ ‘Nightmare’ is our new favorite breakup song, and Amy Schumer hilariously crashed this couple’s engagement photoshoot.

20. My plea to the Universe: Show me that I’m not alone from Andrea Scher.

21. How To Make Curly Hair With A T-Shirt.

22. Scientists Blow The Lid on Cancer & Sunscreen Myth.

23. Anne Lamott’s Comments About Caitlyn Jenner Are Just Plain Wrong.

24. Satisfying Arrangements Of Everyday Objects By Emily Blincoe on Bored Panda.

25. Truthbomb #818 from Danielle LaPorte, “(a prayer:) May my suffering be of service.”

26. Patient Japanese Man Takes Pet Giant Tortoise Out for Long Walks. I love how weird humans are, and I love that Eric liked this so much, he sent me the link twice not realizing he’d already sent it.

27. I Quit My Job Today. (And so can you!)

28. Note from the Universe:

In the “real” world, it’s better to have loved and lost, tried and failed, dreamed and missed, than to sit out your turn in fear. Because the loss, the failure, and the miss, however painful, are merely temporary market adjustments, soon forgotten. Whereas the love, the adventure, and the dream are like investments that, for the rest of your life and beyond, never stop paying dividends.

29. Wisdom from Lao Tzu, “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”

30. thrive portrait: kelly from Chookooloonks.

31. This Guy Singing ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ With Strangers In Traffic Will Make You Smile. (Thanks for sharing, Shellie).

32. A Simple Guide to Making Better Decisions: Why Too Many People Get Paralyzed and What to Do Instead.

33. 5 Habits of Highly Effective Writers: Do these things today for a more productive and inspired writing life.

34. What’s next for me as a writer? on A Design So Vast.

35. sola dosis facit venenum from Rachel Cole.

36. The Gentle Path to a Simple Life from Be More With Less.

37. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

If you are in a time, beautiful friend, where you have done all that you can do…and now you must just wait…take heart. Don’t give up.

Sometimes all that you can do is wait for it to feel better, wait for a bad day to be over, wait for things to work themselves out.

Patience is hard to embrace, and practicing patience is hard to do. But patience teaches us tremendous lessons and rewards us with tremendous gifts. Patience makes us grow in ways that nothing else could. Most things that have lasting value come through doing difficult things.

Sometimes when you have done all that you can possibly do, you just have to wait.

Keep your heart open, keep believing what you believe. Keep your thoughts toward where you are headed, and how you WANT to feel, toward what is ahead. Do you best to learn in the moment. Do your very best.

Things will turn around, just like they always do. Life will work out, just like it always does. You will be through this before you know it.

38. 25 tips for (a delightfully old-fashioned) summer vacation.

39. 7 Amazing Quotes from David Sedaris’ Reddit AMA.

40. Cosette & Henri – A Story of Two Puppy Mill Dogs.

41. She was tired of just letting the depression consume her. So she set up her camera and took these.

42. Diane Sawyer Shares The ‘Genius’ Marriage Advice She’ll Never Forget (VIDEO).

43. Billy Bob Thornton Has ‘Never Trusted Happiness’ Since His Brother’s Death.

44. This 400 Sq Ft Cabin Is Cute, But Seeing The Inside…

45. Sanskrit Pronunciation of Yoga Poses.

46. 10 Photos of Interracial Couples Show the Impact of ‘Loving v. Virginia’ 48 Years Later.

47. 25 Portraits of American Indians You Might Not Have Seen (No Curtis!).

Something Good

Roaring

Roaring Creek, image by Eric

1. The poetics of spinach on Rita’s Notebook, in which Rita says, “I’m realizing that whether I am growing poems or spinach, there is a vital part of the process that requires me to leave things alone. There is a part that is beyond my control, that is determined by things I cannot put my hands on.”

2. Lori’s story – Gratitude Grows. “For more than a year, artist Lori Portka painted her gratitude through individual pieces of art for 100 people who have made a difference in her life.”

https://vimeo.com/121724954

3. Voices from Nepal: Earthquake survivors tell their stories, illustrated stories on Medium.

4. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club. I really needed to hear this.

Dear Lovely Girl,

Sometimes it’s tempting to bend and twist and stand on our toes to change enough for certain others to like us, for us to be able to ‘fit in’. Self betrayal doesn’t ever lead to happiness, however, and doing things that we know in our gut are not right for us, bending our values, those things just lead us down a really tricky path — a path that often leads us to places that are so far from where we wanted to end up that we just can’t figure out how we ever got there.

When we decide to put value in those who love us exactly as we are, life gets really sweet. Sometimes we have to wait to find those who like the real us, but it is always worth the wait.

Beautiful friend, you are wonderful in your purest, deepest, truest form. You don’t have to change to be loved. There are those who will love all that is real about you, and those are the real relationships that a meaningful life is made of.

You are worth waiting for.
You are so very very very loved.
xoxo

5. Shared on Rowdy Kittens’ Happy Links list: Building a Living Around Your Creative Soul: Cynthia Morris (a Good Life Project podcast) and Do More With Less, a film about hiking the Pacific Coast Trail that I’m sure Eric will want to watch with me.

6. You don’t have to work to become. You already are. Kylie Bellard on Medium.

7. “Practical” body image tip #1… from Isabel Foxen Duke.

8. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter this week: Terry Gross To Marc Maron: ‘Life Is Harder Than Radio’ and A Woman on the Margins: An interview with Vivian Gornick about the problem with writing programs, the memoir’s potential for dishonesty, and finding her way as a writer and Works in Progress: A very small sampling of the female artists now in their 70s, 80s and 90s we should have known about decades ago.

9. Good stuff from this week’s Positively Present Picks list: 9 Addictions 90% of Us Struggle With, and How Art Can Heal Anxiety, and 7 Thinking Patterns You Use to Distort Reality.

10. Good stuff from Susannah Conway’s Something for the Weekend list: What Do You Do When the Internet Hates You? and How To Meditate (Funny) – Ultra Spiritual Life episode 14 – with JP Sears.

11. Truthbomb #802 from Danielle LaPorte, “Try staying open when you want to shut down, it changes everything.”

12. Shared on Peaceful links from Peaceful Triumphs: Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age, an On Being podcast with the creator of Brain Pickings.

13. Abandoned House In Detroit Brought Back To Life With 4,000 Flowers on Bored Panda.

14. money talks • stefanie renée and liz kalloch, by Sherry Belul.

15. Dog Chases Owner’s Ambulance After Suffering A Stroke. This video almost wrecked me, and yet I feel like I needed to share it. Don’t let the title throw you — it’s actually a PSA about being an organ donor.

16. Wisdom from Anne Lamott, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

17. As Memorial Day Nears, a Single Image That Continues to Haunt.

18. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,
thewayout

19. This man who was body-shamed by Internet trolls just got the dance party of his dreams.

20. The Last Viewing from Story Corps.