Something Good

Morning traffic, image by Eric

1. Doing What You Love Is Going To Be Fucking Hard, wisdom from Jon Westenberg.

2. 16 Elevating Resolutions for 2016 Inspired by Some of Humanity’s Greatest Minds on Brain Pickings. “Cultivate honorable relationships, resist absentminded busyness, tell the world how to treat you, embrace enoughness, and more.” What a great list. One of my favorites is #6.

3. Debating Health at Every Size and Weight Loss and What Size We’re Supposed To Be from Dances With Fat.

4. A Simple Year, 12 months of guided simplicity, each month with a different topic focus, a course offered by some of my favorite people. Registration is open until January 31st.

5. Lemme just grab a selfie with my dogs, one of the cutest pictures ever.

6. Buttermilk Roast Chicken recipe. Looks delicious.

7. Andrea Gibson on the callus of hands and the softness of heart, on the Bawdy Love podcast, “Audaciously love your body.” I adore Andrea, and can’t wait to check out Lauren’s new book.

8. The Best Part of Life from Momastery.

9. Let 2016 be the year of the JOMO, a great cartoon from The Oatmeal. I’m in!

10. Who Says Plus Size Women Can’t? #iwontcompromise. This video is so great, and this project’s mission,

#iwontcompromise is a movement that celebrates doing what we love, wearing what makes us feel good, and being who we are without compromise. No limits, no fears, no judgments, just pure enjoyment. When we hold ourselves back in fear of how we may be perceived, society misses out. Let them stare. Let them see what we can do. Let’s inspire them together.

11. Cat Returns Home With A Note Revealing She Has A Secret Family on Bored Panda. Examples of one of the reasons I have dogs.

12. Tips for Properly Inserting a USB Cable on McSweeney’s, funny because it’s true.

13. Being overweight won’t necessarily make you unhealthy, but feeling bad about it will. Word.

14. People can’t get enough of this new organic, vegetarian fast food. I love Amy’s frozen food, so I bet this place would be yummy.

15. You do not have to be good from Meghan Genge.

16. Woman Goes Viral After Shutting Down Racist Co-Worker in the Most Hilarious Way Possible.

17. I Thought I Was Above Body Image Issues — Until I Lost A Lot Of Weight. “As a result of antidepressants, my weight has always been just outside my control. But when I changed my medication and unexpectedly lost a noticeable amount of weight, I was forced to confront body image issues I thought I was intellectually above.”

18. Our Absurd Fear of Fat. This is an older piece, but it’s still relevant.

19. How to Establish a Daily Practice Of Almost Anything, in Six Steps. So simple, so smart. #2 is one of my favorite hints.

20. A Useful and Incomplete List of Bright Lights, a really great collection of resources from Rachel Cole. Also worth noting is Rachel’s next round of her program Feast is open for applications, (deadline to apply: January 15th).

21. Regularly Scheduled Program from Allowing Myself. Everything Justine writes is so simple, but has such depth.

22. Melissa Harris-Perry has a great point about Oprah’s new weight loss ad. Word.

23. 36 Things I Know After 36 Years of Marriage. As a person in a long term marriage (22 years and counting), I really appreciated this one.

24. Black Bean and Sweet Potato Quesadillas recipe. I’ve talked about these before, many many times. You really should try them — so good. P.S. I double the spices for the potatoes, because they are so yummy.

25. When Can Women Stop Trying to Look Perfect?

26. 4 Principles That Guide My Year from Laura Simms. I love #3.

27. Austin Kleon’s latest newsletter. I was collecting a few things from this list to share with you, but I gave up when I realized the whole thing was too good not to share.

28. Good stuff from Rowdy Kittens Happy Links list: A Good Life, A Good Death, and What My Mother Wanted Us to Pack, and 15 Ways to Simplify Your Life (and Finances) Before the End of 2015.

29. Ylvis – a capella, a hilarious spoof of a type of performance I totally adore.

30. Creative Thursday | season 1 ep.1 | Erin Dollar “Meet Erin Dollar, the designer and founder of the gorgeous Cotton & Flax. Started in 2012, her hand printed home goods now sell worldwide. Join us as we talk creativity + biz on the premiere episode of Creative Thursday!”

31. What was Real and What Was Fake: The Inside Scoop on HGTV’s House Hunters International. I still love this show, even knowing the truth.

32. The Will to Change Must Come From Within from Jonathan Fields.

33. How To Keep Loving Someone.

34. 3 Myths about “Intuitive Eating” from Isabel Foxen Duke.

35. Salon’s guide to writing a memoir, an older post, but still worth reading.

36. A Stunning New Video: Stop. Look. Go. A “stunning, short film of un-hurried, un-plugged summer days with family and friends, beautifully illustrating Br. David’s simple ‘Stop. Look. Go.’ grateful living practice.

37. Is The Fuck It Diet just GIVING UP on My Health?

Poudre River, image by Eric

1. The 100 Day Promise from Sandi Amorim. “The 100 Day Promise is a practice that guides you through the process of change in an in-depth and soulful way.” I mentioned this last week, but wanted to tell you again in case you missed it because the program started on January 1^st, but Sandi is leaving registration open until the 7^th. You should also check out her book , The 100 Day Promise: A Guide To Changing From The Inside Out.

2. Things you should quit this year (Sugar is not one of them!). This last part, “Health and fitness comes in all shapes and sizes. Truly. You cannot tell by looking at someone how fit or well they are. You don’t know if they have strong mental health, absence of illness, physical strength, and stamina or if they have a disordered approach to food, suffer from mental health issues or struggle with fatigue. A person’s size cannot tell you these things.” Word.

3. Nigella Lawson: Clean Eating Is ‘a Way to Hide an Eating Disorder.’

4. 9,500-Year-Old Tree Found in Sweden Is The World’s Oldest Tree. So cool.

5. Here’s How Many People Fatally Overdosed On Marijuana Last Year.

6. What 8 body positive activists want you to know about losing weight in the new year.

7. The 50 Funniest Tweets From Women In 2015. So funny.

8. Baby trying bacon for the first time. 🙂

9. There are performances, and then there are performances. It takes a certain kind of woman to go on stage in an ankle length fur coat (ethics of wearing fur aside). It takes whole other kind of woman to take that coat off, throw it on the floor, and SING.

10. Onion Dip from Scratch recipe. Confession: I love onion dip and a good crisp salty chip.

11. Carrie Fisher to haters: Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. What makes me crazy about this is I saw the movie, and thought “she looks amazing.”

12. In Defense of Food and the Rise of ‘Healthy-ish’ “A new PBS documentary and Bon Appetit’s January issue espouse a radically moderate approach to eating.”

13. President Barack Obama on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I’ve said it before, will say it again: I’d vote for him again if I could.

14. White Awake. “White Awake’s mission is to bring contemplative spiritual practice to white affinity work around race and inner transformation.”

15. Don’t Cry Over Oprah’s New Weight Watchers Commercial. Amen.

16. The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss from the Journal of Obesity.

17. Manifesting 2016: Consciously Creating Your Year from Andrea Scher, self-paced and pay what you can.

18. Happy New Year, Weirdos from Renegade Mothering.

19. Change, Part 1: A New You For a New Year a great dharma talk from Philip Moffitt. I especially love this: In our saying “Happy New Year” one of the things we may be meaning is “This year, may you cease to be the cause of your own suffering.”

20. Happy Notes from Jennifer Belthoff. Such a great idea.

21. A Celebration of Ravi’s Life. “In 2014 Maggie Doyne took malnourished Ravi in at her school and home in Nepal and saved his life. A little over a year later, he passed away in a tragic accident. All money raised will go to Ravi’s siblings in Nepal.” This story is so heartbreaking. Thankfully, this fundraiser gives us the opportunity to do something.

22. Wisdom from Rumi, “I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul.”

23. A Sentiment for Blazing from Danielle LaPorte. I love the last part, “let your pure faith burn the way.”

24. A beautiful New Year’s wish from Andrea Gibson, a poet even in her Facebook posts.

25. Dear Oprah: Please Stop Projecting Your Insecurities Onto Me. Amen.

26. When You’re Both Overweight and Anorexic.

27. 23 Things To Do To Improve Your Mental Health In 2016. A good list.

28. Wisdom from Seth Godin: Surefire predictions and Who is Us?

29. What I learned not drinking for two years.

30. Speak For Yourself Oprah from Dances With Fat. Word. Also from Ragen, New Year’s Revolutions.

31. How to write a simple and beautiful manifesto from Alexandra Franzen. In her latest newsletter, she also shared a link to this cover of Drake’s Hold On, We’re Going Home that’s super dreamy.

32. 10 Best Articles on Writing of 2015. Disclaimer: I haven’t read all these, so I can’t promise these are truly the 10 best.