Category Archives: Marc Johns

Something Good

miniaturepeonies1. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club, “Let yourself be a perfectly imperfect human being. Let yourself feel what you need to feel and process your life the way you need to process it. Let yourself BE in all your beautifully imperfect human-ness. And give everyone else the same grace.”

2. Don’t be original; be obvious.

3. 33 thoughts on reading (A manifesto of sorts) from Austin Kleon.

4. Dear Homeless Guy: I Don’t Care If You Buy Crack With The Dollar I Gave You on Medium. The last line of this really has me thinking.

5. Write from a full cup from Alexandra Franzen.

6. Truthbomb #648 from Danielle LaPorte, “I don’t want to change the world. I want to love it.”

7. Permission from Glenda Burgess, (thanks for sharing, Lindsey).

8. reasons for my leaving from lists and letters.

9. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more from Claws Carefully Sheathed.

10. Wisdom from Rachael Maddox, “Maybe the magic that was missing all along was the will to be all the way true to the call of your brilliant heart.”

11. Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss on The New York Times, Modern Love.

12. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön

Instead of asking ourselves, “How can I find security and happiness?” we could ask ourselves, “Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace — disappointment in all its many forms — and let it open me?” This is the trick.

13. 33 Mantras to Quickly Calm Your Stress Response: Because you deserve to live with ease. Sandra Pawula on Medium.

14. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook: Ultimate Forgiveness and Preach.

15. Wisdom from Phillip Moffitt,

The truth is that you will never be absolutely safe. All things change constantly, even what is most precious. You know that you and those you love will die, but not when or how. This is the angst of life, the price of being a conscious human being. It is not a flaw, although many people cannot let loose of seeing it in such a manner. It is just the way life is constructed. When your awareness of this vulnerability is triggered, you can be swept into panic, collapse into depression, or desperately try to distract yourself. One of the values of spiritual practice is that you are able to come to terms with this anxiety in a conscious manner. Your life becomes more integrated because you are no longer trying to deny or avoid what is true.

16. It Happened to Me: I Taught Fitness and Failed a Fat Test from Sadie Chanlett-Avery.

17. Wisdom from Rebecca Lindenberg, “I think there is a general misconception that you write poems because you ‘have something to say.’ I think, actually, that you write poems because you have something echoing around in the bone-dome of your skull that you cannot say.”

18. If People Were Honest About Women’s Bodies from BuzzFeed Video.

19. What Happens When Cross-Species Best Friends Reunite After Five Years? Hint: someone makes a video, I watch it and sob.

20. Wisdom from Adrienne Rich, “All new learning looks at first like chaos.”

21. Wisdom from Geneen Roth, “When you stop shaming and blaming and feeding the desire to be someone else with a different life, the war with food ends as well.”

22. a ghost’s schedule from Marc Johns. I love this so much.

23. Dear Body: I’m sorry for mistreating you on Hello Giggles.

24. 28 Teeny Tiny Wild Mice on Bored Panda.

25. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club, “Is it time to simplify? Instead of being spread in a too-thin layer all over the place, maybe it’s time to pare your life down to the handful of things that mean the most to you. Then let the rest go so that you can give the very best of yourself to the very best things.”

26. An Itty Bitty White Lie from Rachel Cole. Reason #238 why I love her.

27. Awake in the World: Waking Up Without Words — Ikebana by Alexandra Shenpen.

27. Wisdom from Hafiz,

I should not make any promises right now,
But I know if you
Pray
Somewhere in this world –
Something good will happen.

Satya Robyn shared this on Facebook today, and followed it with some wisdom of her own, “Pray, give thanks, ask for help, admit something to yourself or another human being, listen carefully, be kind, eat chocolate, stop blaming, love everything. It all works.”

28. To Hear the Falling World by Jane Hirshfield. (Thanks for sharing, Jessica).

Only if I move my arm a certain way,
it comes back.
Or the way the light bends in the trees
this time of year,
so a scrap of sorrow, like a bird, lights on the heart.
I carry this in my body, seed
in an unswept corner, husk-encowled and seeming safe.
But they guard me, these small pains,
from growing sure
of myself and perhaps forgetting.

29. There’s A New “Marcel The Shell” Video And It’s Freaking Adorable.

30. Wisdom from Sogyal Rinpoche, “Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the path to freedom.”

31. you are your own damn permission slip from Justine Musk. Word.

Something Good

Frozen City Park Pond

Frozen City Park Pond

1. Let’s make some magic in 2014, Susannah Conway’s Unravelling the Year Ahead workbook.

2. My Word of the Year for 2014 and The Importance of Outtakes! from Vivienne McMaster. She also wrote a wonderful guest post for Rachel Cole.

3. Wisdom from Danna Faulds,

Despite illness of body or mind,
in spite of blinding despair or
habitual belief, who you are
is whole. Let nothing keep you
separate from the truth.

4. Puppy reunited with his dad after being found under rubble 9 days after tornado destroyed home on Dog Heirs, (and his name is Dexter). Every time you read a story like this, the dog’s person always says something like this one did, that he’d lost everything but he was okay because he’d found his dog. When disaster strikes, we don’t care so much about our stuff, we just want our dogs (people, other pets) to be okay.

5. Good stuff from Viral Nova: A Retired Mathematician Found A Rotting Cabin From 1830. What He Did With It Is Perfection. and Here Are The 28 Cutest Things That Have Ever Happened. #20 Made My Entire Year. and See That Tiny Entrance? A Guy Just Went Down There… And You Gotta See What He Found. and This Little Terrier Got That Rottweiler Pregnant. And You’re Gonna Want To See Their Puppies, Trust Me.trust ME, they are stupid cute!

6. Good stuff from Marc and Angel Hack Life: 12 Lies People Love to Tell You and 7 Smart Ways to Deal with Toxic People.

7. Good stuff from Chookooloonks: finding peace and announcing create.2014!

8. Wisdom from Mark Nepo, “No matter how we study or analyze or hone our skills, the greatest teachers have always been love and suffering.”

9. Desire: Hedonism or Happiness? from Jonathan Fields, in which he says,

Sometimes I still need to do the things I hate doing. The things that don’t let me feel the way I want to feel. I don’t entirely buy the fact that if the ride doesn’t feel the way you want to feel at every step along the journey, there’s something wrong.

Especially as a maker, a creator, an entrepreneur. There are times you need to do what you’re least called to do until your endeavor is far enough along to generate the cash, resources, story, energy needed to pay people to do the things that light them up, but empty you out.

10. Marc Johns calls this one life as a tennis racket, but I think you could just call it “Life.”

11. Wisdom from Tulku Thondup,

When I talk about peace, people sometimes mistakenly think that this means detaching yourself from the stream of life. They view peace as if it were something strange, maybe a numbed or sleepy feeling, or being spaced-out and in a different mental zone. This couldn’t be further from the truth. You can be ‘‘peaceful’’ when you are asleep, but that is only the absence of consciousness. The way to truly heal your life is to be awake to its simple joys and to develop an open, welcoming attitude toward all your activities and encounters with other people. You should enjoy yourself and be fully engaged in what you do.

Notice when you feel open and peaceful. Be aware of any feeling of freedom. Awareness is the key. If you are aware of peace, it has a chance to become part of your life. When you feel peaceful, enjoy it. Don’t force your feelings or chase after them or stir up false excitement. There’s no need to grasp. Simply be aware and let the feeling blossom and open. Allow it to expand. Stay with any positive feeling; allow your mind to relax in it. You may find your body feeling peaceful, too. If your breathing feels more relaxed, or you feel a sensation of warmth, pause to notice that as well and enjoy it.

12. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Our habitual patterns are, of course, well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wishing for them to be ventilated isn’t enough. Mindfulness and awareness are key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by a strong emotion, do we remember that it is part of our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can’t practice when distracted but know that we can’t, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what’s going on.

13. Artist Creates Elaborate Non-Photoshopped Scenes in Her Small Studio, amazing and beautiful.

14. Real-Life Fox And The Hound Best Friends Will Melt Your Heart on BuzzFeed. This dog reminds me so much of Dexter.

15. How to Love and be Loved, by a dog on Storyline.

16. before the beginning by Sas Petherick.

17. The 2013 Holiday Gift Guide – Part Three from Rachel Cole.

18. 2013 Meaningful Gift Guide from Create as Folk.

19. Sometimes You Just Need a Snack and a Nap from Curvy Yoga.

20. Kid President’s Holiday Gift Guide.

21. A legacy of Mandela from Seth Godin. My favorite line is, “If you don’t require the journey to be easy or comfortable or safe, you can change the world.”

22. “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
~Chinese Proverb

23. Good stuff from MindBodyGreen: Why I Don’t Recommend A Vegan, Raw, Paleo Or Gluten-Free Diet and 25 Questions To Ask Yourself Before The End Of The Year and 4 Things Women Need To Stop Apologizing For.

24. Artist weaves delightful ‘bio-sculptures’ & animal habitats out of wood on Tree Hugger.

25. Brené Brown on the Courage to be Vulnerable on the On Being podcast.

26. your daily rock : listen to your life

27. Man’s snow storm ‘bread and milk’ freakout goes viral.

28. Wisdom from Tama J. Kieves

Do not believe your fear. You will not be stuck forever. Things will shift. The way will open. This is a Universe of Love. The only reason it’s hard to trust is because you keep caressing your anxiety instead of moving forward. Take the steps you can take. The light always emerges.

29. The Why We Rescue project is complete, all 50 states are up. This project is one of the best things of 2013.

30. Keep Your Day Job, advice from Austin Kleon.

31. What are you building in the New Year? (Get it down on paper. Start here.) from Alexandra Franzen.

32. From Positively Present Picks: 33 Unusual Tips to Being a Better Writer, (I don’t necessarily agree with all of these), and Spending Time with Some Difficult People over the Holidays? Consider These Tips. and A Beautiful Mess photo app.

33. Give the Gift of Self-Compassion, another post about the Self-Compassion Saturday series.

34. Another round of ZenPen the ecourse is open for registration.