Category Archives: Laura Simms

Something Good

My favorite tea

My favorite tea

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

1. Nature Rx Part 1. “Set in the world of a spoofed prescription drug commercial, Nature Rx offers a hearty dose of laughs and the outdoors – two timeless prescriptions for whatever ails you.”

2. How A Couple Of ‘Frugal Weirdos’ Are Saving 71% Of Their Income So They Can Retire At Age 33.

3. Let the Wave Crash Over You: A Letter for My Brother.

4. One Drop Of Blood Can Reveal Almost Every Virus A Person Has Ever Had. Science is cool.

5. on saying goodbye and all the things you wish you could have done. Essential reading for any mom, especially one whose kid is growing up and moving on.

6. I’m 24 years old, and I still have my childhood blanket. Turns out that’s pretty normal.

me too.

me too.

7. This is what we will Regret Most at the End of Our Lives {Infographic} on Elephant Journal.

8. Historic Glass-Plate Photos From Romania Restored And Turned Into Colorful Art (Part 2).

9. The World’s Oldest Multicolored Printed Book Has Been Opened and Digitized for the First Time.

10. What It’s Really Like To Have To Euthanize Animals As A Shelter Worker.

11. How Yoga Gave Me The Strength To Finally Quit Yoga. Yoga is for every body, but might not be for everybody.

12. This Is What Happened When A Museum Allowed Artists To Paint Whatever They Wanted On The Walls.

13. Zucchini Pad Thai Noodles “Zoodles” recipe. I made this last night for dinner and it was delicious.

14. My Morning Routine, “an independent online magazine that brings you a brand new, inspiring morning routine every Wednesday to help set you up for a more productive and enjoyable day.” As someone who gets up every morning before the sun and has a carefully cultivated morning routine, I really appreciated this site. Two of my favorite entries so far are Tammy Strobel and Caroline Leon, who also just so happen to be two of my favorite bloggers and humans.

15. Focus on the Process Instead of the Final Product. Really good advice, no matter what you are working on.

16. Messy is Preferable from Ronna Detrick.

17. Unpacking What ‘Fat’ Really Means (And Why How We Use It Is F*cked Up).

18. The Elephant Whisperers. (video) “Hear what it takes to heal a traumatized elephant from the keepers of Daphne Sheldrick’s orphan elephant rehabilitation center in Nairobi National Park.”

19. Truthbomb #860 from Danielle LaPorte, “Know what’s true for you.”

20. 6 Simple Strategies to Re-wire Your Brain and Laugh in the Face of Failure.

21. Five Tips for Avoiding a Behaviorist. “Many personal budgets are extra-tight. Since appointments with an animal behaviorist can be pricey, let me share a few suggestions for inexpensive ways you can promote better behavior in your dog.”

22. How do you heal? from Alena Hennessy. Wonderful advice on not just healing but living a good life.

23. Unusual Friendship Between Wolf And Bear Documented By Finnish Photographer.

24. Rescuing Wildlife Is Futile, and Necessary.

25. She had the time of her life on a Tinder date. Until she received a shattering text. Her reaction has gone viral.

26. Silence and the Space to Be Amazed by Annie Rosenbauer on On Being. “It only takes one moment of silence to listen, to notice, to be amazed. What do we hear in these moments of silence? We hear each other, we hear ourselves, we hear the Earth.”

27. Discarded Tree Trunks Turned Into Stunning Wood Sculptures By Jae-Hyo Lee. I confess, I get a little stuck in thinking “why were all these trees cut down?” but what he does with the wood is truly amazing.

28. Man Poses as Target on Facebook, Trolls Haters of Its Gender-Neutral Move With Epic Replies.

29. He Was Grieving Over The Death Of His Best Friend, Until An Old Man Told Him THIS. Mind Blown.

30. I’m A Man, And I’ve Spent My Life Ashamed Of My Body. “t shouldn’t be extraordinary for men to talk about having body image issues.”

31. Laurie Wagner: On listening to the sound of our own music. Oh how I adore her.

32. Women’s clothing sizes are actually pretty bonkers. Here’s proof.

33. This just-married Turkish couple gave 4,000 Syrian refugees an incredible gift. “Fethullah Üzümcüoğlu and Esra Polat, just married, decided that instead of spending their families’ savings on a banquet for their wedding guests, they would instead donate the money to feed 4,000 refugees in Kilis.”

34. Death of a Man. . . Death of a Bear.

35. 16 Incredible Stories of Healing Through Yoga. “Through the process of devoting themselves to practice, these humble and strong women and men have found a healing journey that has radically shifted their lives.”

36. Superhero Me! “This charming film follows a gorgeous group of six year olds who are about to graduate from their beloved care school. Their innovative teachers devised a project to celebrate this milestone which nurtures their imaginations and harnesses their individual creativity.”

37. Charles Bukowski’s Rules for Writing. “Be Honest, Have a Few Drinks, and Submit Everything.”

38. World’s Most Photogenic Shar Pei And His Cat Are The Best Friends Ever. This is stupid cute. (Stupid cute: Someone or something that is so attractive it disrupts your ability to intelligently process information while looking at it, something so unbelievably cute it makes you stupid).

39. Too Much to Do, Not Enough Time. Really good advice from Zen Habits.

40. Fall In Love with Your Job, Get Ripped Off by Your Boss. “Miya Tokumitsu’s sharp new book exposes the ‘Do what you love’ fairy tale for what it really is: a means of exploitation.”

41. Newspaper popouts, a cool new project from one of the coolest, Austin Kleon.

42. Georgia orphan’s mission: Make others smile. This little dude is so stinkin’ cute.

43. 4 Questions to Help You Know if You Need a New Job or Just a Break, wisdom from Laura Simms.

44. accidentally good at it on Chookooloonks, in which Karen Walrond suggests a simple but radical shift to achieving your goals.

45. Stop Looking At Your Fucking Phone on Terrible Minds.

46. The Hidden Dog in Us All by Muhammad Asadi on On Being.

47. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

You are doing such good things…such beautiful, wonderful, and important things. Do not feel bad that you have limitations and cannot do everything you want to do, or that you make mistakes that set you back, or you sometimes make decisions that aren’t all that you hoped they would be. You are doing enough. YOU ARE ENOUGH. You are just right, and you are doing your best. When you have done all that you can do, let yourself BREATHE. And remember that rest, relaxation, and solitude are just as important as all of the other incredible things that you do with your life. You are such a gift to the world. Take good care of you. You are beloved.

48. Practice Pema Chödrön’s “Three Conscious Breaths.” “Pema Chödrön teaches us a simple technique we can use anytime we need a break from our habitual patterns.”

49. The Power of Habit Stacking and 7 Daily Habits I Love from Be More With Less.

50. Compared to… from Seth Godin. So good. He has a way of using hardly any words to say everything.

51. Political Correctness, Donald Trump, and Fat Bashing and You’re Not the Fat Person Whisperer on Dances with Fat.

52. Our Eyes Can (and Do) Deceive Us from Rachel Cole. P.S. The deadline to apply for the next round of Feast is August 19th.

53. Herself. “Amazingly beautiful and honest nude portraits and interviews,” shared on Susannah Conway’s Something for the Weekend list.

54. Being successful vs. being known from Paul Jarvis.

55. 7 Surprising Reasons You’re Attracting Toxic People from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

56. Some Thoughts On Body Thoughts from Sunni Chapman.

Something Good

Lory State Park, image by Eric

Lory State Park, image by Eric

1. Fuck That! A Manifesto from Gala Darling.

2. More Consensus on Coffee’s Benefits Than You Might Think.

3. How not to talk to people with an eating disorder.

4. A Tiny Hamster And A Hedgehog Had A Tiny Tiki Party Because The Internet Is Amazing.

5. Nepal Earthquake Relief Coalition.

6. A Variety of Unprocessed Foods Cut into Uncannily Precise 2.5cm Cubes by Lernert & Sander.

7. Release Tension in the Psoas. “Our yoga practice is an opportunity to undo this chronic tension, and establish a deep and abiding sense of harmony in the body and mind.”

8. The Secret Life of a Scorpio on Elephant Journal.

9. 23 Brilliant Life Lessons From Anthony Bourdain.

10. Rats try to rescue others in distress, suggesting they feel empathy.

11. How to Get Rid of Clutter You Care About from Be More with Less.

12. In the Garden, May 14 on SouleMama.

13. How to Get Your Spouse on Board for Your Career Change from Laura Simms.

14. 3 Ways You’re Making Your Life Harder Than It Has To Be on Marc and Angel Hack Life.

15. the stylists: little nicki on SF Girl by Bay.

16. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club, two different messages, both ones I needed to hear,

Dear Spread-Too-Thin Girl….

Is it time to pare your life down to the handful of things that mean the most to you, and let the rest go so that you can give the very best of yourself to the very best things…instead of being spread in a too-thin layer all over the place?

Your heart knows when it’s time…and you will have the strength to do it.

And best of all…you will see enormous changes happen in your life when you let the unimportant things go and embrace the things that quietly sustain you and bring you joy.

It may not look like the most glamorous life….but it is one filled with joy, peace and harmony….one where laughter is a welcome and frequent companion…one where worries are few…where long meaningful conversations are many…..one that is waiting for you when you are ready to take the steps to get there.

You can do amazing things with the simplest things. You can have so little and be so happy. You can take small amounts of time and perform life-changing acts.

Is it time to simplify?

Simplify today…..one little thing at time. You can do it.

AND

Dear Wise Girl,

Having a rough day? Stop and take a breath, and remember it’s important to stick to the facts, because we often make things up in our heads that get us into a tizzy that is hard to get out of. Fears are mean little fabulists.

Think about everything you have feared in your life, or even for the last 30 days. Think about what you have feared for the last 24 hours, in fact. Think about the stories that you made up in your head about those fierce fears, about all of the terrible and scary and devastating things that surrounded those fears, about how if those things happened, they would surely ruin your life.

Now think about whether or not ANY of those things came to pass, and whether they really did devastate your life. Sure, some yucky things actually DO happen, but a large majority of our fears are stories that we make up in our heads that never ever happen. Yet we waste SO MUCH TIME on them. Aren’t we silly creatures?

So stick to the facts. And if the facts are harsh and look like they might yield some difficult consequences, think about the WORST thing that could possibly happen, and then ask yourself if you could live through it and be okay. See? YOU CAN! And YOU WILL!!

Because you are a brave, brave girl.

17. On Unplugging from Work & Embracing Adventure from Rowdy Kittens.

18. Dear Writers: None Of Us Know What The Fuck We’re Doing on Terrible Minds. tl;dr:

The Five Constants:
1. Write A Lot (And To Completion)
2. Read A Lot (And Read Critically When You Do)
3. Think About Writing And Storytelling
4. Talk To Writers
5. Go Live A Life

19. A Guy Secretly Filmed His Mom For A Year To Help Her Find A Boyfriend.

20. Practicing Non-Judgment on Zen Habits.

21. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s newsletter: Dear universe (form letter), and Karr to Syracuse grads: Don’t compare your twisted-up insides to others’ blow-dried outsides and a video of the same speech, and In a Mother’s Library, Bound in Spirit and in Print.

22. Video: 100 years of Aging a Soon-to-be Married Couple.

23. Man Cleans Up Entire River On His Way To Work.

24. The Last Day of Her Life, “When Sandy Bem found out she had Alzheimer’s, she resolved that before the disease stole her mind, she would kill herself. The question was, when?”

25. At the Coffeehouse by Jeff Oaks.

26. Melissa McCarthy has powerful words for image-obsessed Hollywood.

27. The Heart and the Bottle: A Tender Illustrated Fable of What Happens When We Deny Our Difficult Emotions on Brain Pickings.