Category Archives: Brave Girls Club

Something Good

2 Replies
Arthur's Rock, image by Eric

Arthur’s Rock, image by Eric (the zoom on my new camera is crazy good)

So great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.

And P.S., I didn’t realize it until it was already published, but last week’s was the 200th Something Good list!

1. Watch Twilight Zone Creator Rod Serling Discuss Writing and Storytelling.

2. The root of the “food prison” from Isabel Foxen Duke.

3. Overcoming the 10 Biggest Obstacles to Creating on Zen Habits.

4. It’s been 19 months, a beautiful, horrible piece about the aftermath of a sister’s suicide.

5. Entitlement vs. worthiness from Seth Godin, in which he makes a really important distinction.

6. Good stuff on Positively Presents Picks list: 13 Ways Reading Will Improve Your Life and 30-day gratitude photo challenge: 2015 edition.

7. Trust by Maya Stein, one of her 10-line Tuesday poems. You can sign up to have one in your inbox every Tuesday. You should sign up. She’s an amazing poet. The way she lands a last line cracks the whole poem wide open, e v e r y time.

8. Why You Should Do NaNoWriMo…And Why You Shouldn’t on Terrible Minds. It started officially yesterday. Are you? Here’s a pep talk from Chuck if you need it, NaNoWriMo Pep Talk: The Perfect Machine Versus The Art Monster.

9. Take a Walk Around the Lake on Be More With Less.

10. 2nd Annual Awake in the World event. Starting on November 4th, you can get access to over 30 dialogues, presentations, and guided meditations in this FREE offering. “Over the course of 5 days you can explore teachings and practices with the potential to transform your personal sense of well-being, your relationships, your work life, and our society. Topics range from learning how to meditate, to applying mindfulness in everyday life, living with more purpose, getting involved in societal transformation and so much more.” Did I mention this is all FREE?! What are you waiting for? Go sign up!

11. 50 Questions to Help You Foster Gratitude and Feel Good About Life, an excellent set of contemplations from Tiny Buddha that would make great journal prompts or conversation starters.

12. So you want to have kids…A one-sided story of what to be prepared for in parenthood. “You will get poop on you.”

13. What I Wish I’d Known About Miscarriage. There are a lot of really good pieces on Medium about this topic.

14. Margaret Atwood On How Tech Influences Creativity.

15. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

Dreamers are not always treated with kindness and understanding. Visionaries are rarely taken seriously. People who seek for what is good and true are often scoffed, laughed at or shut down.

…

It’s brave to keep dreaming big dreams, to keep posing big questions, to decide not to settle for the status quo. It’s brave to seek for more beauty, goodness, joy and light in a world when it’s often so hard to find. It’s so courageous to keep your heart and mind on the good stuff and to ignore the fears that try so hard to keep us from all that our hearts are begging to have and experience.

16. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter: A reminder: If you want fans, you have to be a fan first and The Steal Like An Artist Journal Talk.

17. Simple But Not Easy: The Right Effort of Beginning Again by Sharon Salzberg on On Being.

18. ‘Wild’ author Cheryl Strayed says you need to be ‘be brave enough to break your own heart,’ an interview from The Los Angeles Times.

19. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck from Mark Manson.

20. Good stuff from Bored Panda: Wiener Dog Totally Photobombs Couple’s Engagement Photos, and Never Leave Your Bed Again With This Awesome Japanese Invention, and Colorful Murals Appear On Roads Only When It’s Raining.

21. Something is going to kill you. Life is about what happens before that. “Maybe bacon causes cancer. So does sunshine. Everything that might possibly sustain us and bring joy to our lives only hastens our inevitable deaths.” This doesn’t mean we don’t take care of ourselves, but it certainly means maybe we shouldn’t get so hysterical about every little thing that we miss the good stuff. It’s about discernment, silly humans. Besides, Research links cancer to fruit and vegetables. In related news, Forget the Bacon: Living in Poverty Means You Have An Advanced Risk of Getting Cancer.

22. You can’t pay your rent with “the unique platform and reach our site provides” by Wil Wheaton. Or you could look at it this way: What This ‘Star Trek’ Actor Gets Wrong about Working for Free.

23. A Room Of My Own, on the importance of making a space for yourself.

24. I lead, they teach from Laurie Wagner. This is about writing, but it’s also about the importance of community, and how even virtual community can be real. I take one of Laurie’s Wild Writing classes, and she’s totally right — it’s fucking magic.

25. “You Are Fat.”

26. 10/10 Would Be Fat Again from Meghan Tonjes. She did a really great cover of the new Adele song too.

https://youtu.be/6_Po2lELD6A

27. A video by Jess Blank with a special thanks to Roz The Diva. Defying body-norm-expectations with her inspiring athleticism and determination, she’s reclaiming an activity many consider objectifying.

28. I have finally isolated the problem, wisdom from Anne Lamott on Facebook.

29. A Week in the Life of Maira Kalman. “The illustrator reads the obits, wanders New York City and embraces an attitude of gratitude.” This is so simple, so beautiful.

30. I’ve been wanting to tell you… from Tiffany Han. Just trust me, you need to go read this. Go ahead. Go now. I’ll wait.

31. Wisdom from L.R. Knost,

Life is amazing. And then it’s awful, And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and the awful, it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful and relax an exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soulhealing, amazing, awful ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.

32. 15+ Brutally Honest Illustrations Perfectly Sum Up Adulthood, which led me to my new favorite Instagram account.

33. Wisdom from Liza Palmer, “Angry is just sad’s bodyguard.”

34. Cracking the Codes: Joy DeGruy “A Trip to the Grocery Store.” So important.

35. No, it’s not you: why ‘wellness’ isn’t the answer to overwork. “No amount of multivitamins, yoga, meditation, sweaty exercise, superfoods or extreme time management, as brilliant as all these things can be, is going to save us from the effects of too much work.” Amen. Oh, and while we are at it, there’s no such thing as work/life balance — it’s all your life, silly humans.

36. Video: Taylor Phinney discovers his love for painting. “Phinney broke his leg in a crash at the 2014 U.S. nationals last May and has been on the mend since. He discovered his hidden talent of painting four months after the incident.”

37. ‘Ridiculous Fun’ Helps A Blogger See Through Depression’s Darkness.

38. Of naphopomo and the advent of light, two really great offerings from Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks.

39. Flow to the Music With This Trance-Inducing Playlist. I’m loving it, might even put Spotify on my phone so I can play it at my class tomorrow morning.

40. Feel-Good Yoga: 10 Poses to Feed Our Souls on Elephant Journal.

41. This Site Will Make a Stuffed Animal Clone of Your Pet. I’ve also seen felted mini clones, which I like even better. I need some.

42. A Healing Technique to Release Old Wounds on Elephant Journal.

43. Fiery Sweet Potatoes recipe. I need to try these. I read the list of ingredients and all I could think was “get in my mouth.”

44. A blessing from Elizabeth Gilbert and Rumi on Facebook.

45. HAES is Not Spooky, but Bad Research Methods Are on Dances with Fat.

Something Good

2 Replies

grasshoppermums

So great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.

1. For Family Of Drowned Syrian Boy, ‘There Was No Other Hope,’ Uncle Says. The very ending of this interview is heartbreaking and beautiful. And then there’s this, What’s in my Bag? What refugees bring when they run for their lives. And this helps, Trying to follow what is going on in Syria and why? This comic will get you there in 5 minutes. And this great piece by Nicholas Kristof, Refugees Who Could Be Us. Which leads directly to this, Here’s how you can help during the refugee crisis in Europe.

2. Freedom | Three Years in the Making from Mara Glatzel, in which she shares “the three things that helped me devote myself to this dream.”

3. Kathryn Joseph \\ the worm, a beautiful video. (Thanks to Jo for sharing).

4. West Wing Week 09/04/15 or, “Let’s Go to Alaska!” I’ve said it before: I’d vote for him again if I could. Because, stuff like this, Obama commented on this HONY post, and the whole thing is making us emotional, and this,

“The time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers is past. The time to plead ignorance is surely past. Those who want to ignore the science, they are increasingly alone. They’re on their own shrinking island.”

5. 14 compliments that have nothing to do with looks and everything to do with being an amazing human.

6. The power of a smile by Sarah Sloane, who I am lucky enough to know and work with.

7. Artist Brings Homelessness To Light With Thought-Provoking Collection.

When Willie Baronet went on a cross-country adventure collecting cardboard signs made by the homeless, he never expected to eliminate his apprehension and discomfort with seeing them on the street. As an artist and professor in Dallas, Texas, Willie created the ‘We Are All Homeless Project’ to raise awareness and learn more about each person he interacted with. Throughout his trip, he bonded with the homeless by taking time to sit down and learn their stories. This project has shocked thousands of people who have gone to see it, with hundreds of signs in one place, each telling their own story. Willie’s mission is to help others understand that humanity is so important and everyone’s story is unique.

8. Elise Andrew F*cking Loves Science, “she’s young, she’s a woman, and she f*cking loves science. So much so that she created a Facebook page that now boasts an audience of over 7 million.”

9. This Is What Happened When People Were Rated On Their Success By Loved Ones.

10. Exes Asked Each Other Incredibly Honest Questions And Things Got Too Real. Just one of the stories from The And project.

11. This Couple Quit Their Jobs To Travel And Now Scrub Toilets To Get By. “Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger wrote in a blog post that social media hides the reality of their journey around the globe.” And in their own words on their blog, Why We Quit Our Jobs in Advertising to Scrub Toilets.

12. Your Baby’s Ugly. I’m not sure how to describe this other than to say if you like radio storytelling and find the process of editing fascinating, this is just for you.

13. Best 100 Health Coach Blogs 2015, a list from The Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

14. 15 Dogs Who Are Just Showing Off Their Superior Yoga Skillz.

15. I Love My Dog’s Nose, cute dog nose pictures from Gabi Stickler.

16. Teach yourself how to wake up early.

17. A Guide to Dealing with Frustration & Disappointment in Yourself from Zen Habits.

18. Get More Done with (a Lot) Less Stress: 13 Simple and Daily Work Habits.

19. in the garden, September 4 from SouleMama.

20. The Surprising Reason Humans Love Cat Videos. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t so surprised by the reason. This is one of my favorite cat videos,

21. Stop Waiting for Permission to Live the Life You Want to Live.

22. A new batch of Austin Kleon’s newspaper popouts.

23. A Lie Agreed Upon: David Milch’s Deadwood. A video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz about one of my favorite shows, shared by Austin Kleon.

24. This great quote from Joseph Luzzi, “I hope you’ll discover, as I have, that it’s not what lands you in the dark woods that defines you, but what you do to make it out.” (thanks for sharing, Lindsey).

25. Truthbomb #879 from Danielle LaPorte, “People love you.”

26. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

Beautiful friend, you are wonderful in your purest, deepest, truest form. You don’t have to change to be loved. 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.

27. Instead of Finding Your Passion, Find *THIS* from Laura Simms. She’s also running another round of the Your Career Homecoming Challenge (FREE), which I did last week, learned a lot about myself and had some fun too.

28. Five elementary kids are asked why 1 kid is being bullied… watch what the boy on the end reveals. Boys will be boys. ❤

29. The Mindfulness Summit, “The summit is a beautiful, comprehensive and practical online guide to mindfulness and it’s all for free! We’ve gathered the leading teachers and experts around the world to share their wisdom with you and it’s all going to be free for the whole month of October. Each day of October one speaker will be live for you to access. 31 speakers in 31 days for you to enjoy.”

30. 7 Ways to Protect Yourself from Other People’s Negative Energy from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

31. Rearranging our prejudices, wisdom from Seth Godin.

32. Simplicity is the Way Back to Love from Be More With Less.

33. Note from the Universe, “I’d say the biggest decision of your life, Jill, was not your career, your marital status, or your home… it was choosing to love as often as you have.”

34. How to Move Forward Once You’ve Hit Bottom by Pema Chödrön. Brilliant.

35. I have an eating disorder. A beautiful confession that begins with,

I’ve known it for a long, long time, but I am only just now getting the ability to articulate it in words and confront the truth. It’s not courage, and I’m not brave. I’m just too exhausted to pretend any longer that everything is ok.

36. Sign up to receive Pema’s 7-hour audio program, “True Happiness” for FREE! Offer ends Sept. 8th, 2015. I can’t wait for her new book, Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better: Wise Advice for Leaning into the Unknown.

37. Cockatoo running around yelling absolute nonsense. This has been making me laugh so hard I cry, can barely breathe. I so get how this bird feels, and watching him run around and rant makes me feel so much better, about all of it.

38. This YouTuber’s Heartfelt Response To A Fat-Shaming Video Will Move You To Tears.

39. Cloud 7: Portraits of Dog Owners & Their Dogs on decor8. I recommended checking out the full set of portraits.

40. Rising Strong: Brené Brown on the Physics of Vulnerability and What Resilient People Have in Common on Brain Pickings.

41. Mental minimalism (it’s a thing) from Paul Jarvis. This one really hits home for me.

We can’t do everything. We can’t say yes to everything. We especially can’t have zero boundaries if we want to have the mental space needed to create things.

42. What Happened When I Stopped Complaining for Two Weeks.