Category Archives: Something Good

Something Good

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This is my first day back in my Eddy Hall office at Colorado State University, so I need this list as much as you.

Well-Fed Woman Mini Retreatshop.

Rachel W. Cole is on tour, and you don’t want to miss this! I have instigated an event in Fort Collins on February 19th, and you should register for it if you are in Colorado.  Otherwise, check out her website for other dates and locations.

Testimonial from Retreatshop run-through attendee: “There is something really empowering about witnessing someone unravel their truth and their story to how they got to that truth. You can feel it reverberating in your body at its core – and the shifting begins to happen. The shift towards being present with yourself and your truest desires. It’s this re-learning process of being true to ourselves, being loving and kind to ourselves, and reconnecting with our intuitive selves that crochets into self-magic. I thank Rachel Cole who masterfully created a safe forum for other powerful women who had come to explore a greater understanding of their true hungers and left feeling a deeper trust for their true intuitions.”~Sanaz Ebriani

Positively Present 365 Photo Project

This looks really fun, and I’m sad that I don’t have time to do it. “The purpose of the Positively Present 365 Photo Project is to help you live a more present life by paying attention to your surroundings and capturing them with a camera.” There’s also the opportunity to share your photos.

image from positively present

A Year With Myself

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth saying again: you should do this!

Go on thematic weekly quests of self-love and self-discovery. Be best friends with yourself. Hone your strengths and reshape your true mission. And gently empower yourself and your work by taking one tiny transformative step at a time. Give yourself the power to steer your life in the direction you want it to go. Follow your aspirations. Be stronger and more confident. Every Monday throughout 2012, a fresh weekly quest theme, a stimulating writing prompt and one actionable idea will be published on the blog. And we’ll have more than 70 amazing guest Instigators who will contribute to the weekly prompts, generously sharing their wisdom and experience with us!

25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing

This list, from the Terrible Minds blog, was inspired by this post “30 Things To Stop Doing To Yourself.” Author Chuck Wendig says “I read this cool article last week…and I thought, hey, heeeey, that’s interesting. Writers might could use their own version of that. So, I started to cobble one together. And, of course, as most of these writing-related posts become, it ended up that for the most part I’m sitting here in the blog yelling at myself first and foremost. That is, then, how you should read this: me, yelling at me. If you take away something from it, though? Then go forth and kick your writing year in the teeth.” It’s a really great list.

Writing Prompt from Gwen Bell

I actually heard about this prompt from Patti Digh during her website launch party. She described it this way “If you had 15 minutes left to live, set a timer for 15 minutes and tell the story that must be told.”

SF Girl by Bay “Hot Tin Roof” Post

As much as I love tiny cabins, cottages, treehouses, and restored campers, I love churches converted into living spaces. This one that SFGirl shared on her blog is absolutely dreamy.

12 stupidly easy resolutions for 2012

Written by Mark Morford, this article is a must read. Need more convincing? Here’s one of the twelve:

6) Drink the awe: It’s a brutally fast-paced, Facebooked, hypertext-drunk world, my loves, and it’s just ridiculously easy to take it all for granted, to sit there and type your message into your glorious little device and attach a video and send it halfway round the world as you sip your coffee that came from 8,000 miles away and think nothing of it all, when in fact there are roughly 1,008 astonishing miracles banging around your life right this second if you just were able to realize their wobbly gifts. What a thing.

Creativity Requires Time

AMEN!!!

“Be Brave” Commercial

Love it, *sniff*

a little bird told me: Daily Truths from the Brave Girls Club

These are so encouraging, every day you get a sweet love note in your inbox. This one from January 4th was just what I needed:

Dear Fantastic Girl,

So often there are beautiful, comforting and helpful things right in front of us…waiting for us to notice and take hold…yet for all sorts of reasons, we keep looking past those things.

Often we feel like we have to do more to “earn” help or comfort or blessings. Often we want to struggle through to prove that we can do it on our own and we run ourselves into the ground before we ask for help. Often we are so busy with our heads down, plowing through and suffering…that we simply fail to notice things that would ease our pain that are right in front of us, and often have been there all along.

Take some time, sweet friend, to look around and see what is there to make things better. Notice good books, helpful people, generous offers and random acts of grace. When something shows up, open yourself up to it…simply saying thank-you is enough…you don’t have to earn it, you don’t have to do anything to “deserve” it.

You are worthy of comfort, blessings and help.

You are so very very very loved.

xoxo

Daily Peace Quote

Another gem I get in my inbox on a regular basis. My intention for yoga class today, “I am already free,” and my resolve to tend to my body during this year of retreat was reinforced by today’s quote from Cheri Huber:

The body knows how to heal itself, but it needs support and cooperation. If we keep taking energy from the body and giving it to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate, the body will weaken and egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate will get stronger. If we give attention, awareness, energy, life force to what life is offering us in each moment—pure, undivided focus on what is, here/now—our experience will be freedom.

I Was a Dancer All Along

Britt Bravo shared this video on her blog, saying “Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved to dance, which is why I keep watching this video that my friend, Gabriela, posted on her Facebook page last month: ‘Two year old doing what she loves. Dancing.’ ” I had to pass it along, because it is one of the cutest things ever, and absolutely inspiring–you want to be this kind of joyful.

Something Good.

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Holy wow, do I have a list for you today!

Cupcakes.

I call these “grown up cupcakes”: dark chocolate with buttercream frosting. I added peppermint chips on top because it was Christmas. Every time I make these, I think of the zenhabits.net post that Leo Babauta wrote, “The Quiet Theory of Influence,” in which he says “Imagine owning a muffin shop. If the muffins are commonplace, you’ll have to advertise and do some ‘guerilla marketing’ to get customers. But if your muffins make people roll their eyes in ecstasy, they will tell the world of your deliciousness, and the world will pound on your muffin-scented door.” Or in this case, cupcake-scented.

Review, Reflect, and Resolve: Being Able to Start Again

Today, I am starting this process. My plan is to go through all the practices and worksheets I mentioned the other day, and distill them into a list that works, specifically for me.  At first, because it’s just how/who I am, I thought I would do all of them: “do all the reviews!” Then I thought maybe I could pick a few of my favorites, but finally decided I like the magic and possibility of reading through them all and selecting the questions and strategies that stood out, spoke to me, sparkled. Some things I know I’ll be doing is reviewing my journals from this past year (skimming, there’s just too much to actually read), coming up with a reading list for 2012, and personalizing the day planner Eric got me for Christmas, in which he wrote “Jill’s guide to the best year ever!”

Great Presents.

For the past few years, my nieces have sent me the cutest mugs.  Here’s this year’s offering:

Eric made me two terrariums. My grandma kept African Violets, and when I did my releasing ceremony on the Winter Solstice, towards the end of the burn, there was part of the fire that was the exact color of the one Eric gave me. I’d never seen fire burn that color.

And Eric really liked the book I made him, “The Story of Us.” He said it reminded him of Post Secret or Found Magazine, two of our favorite projects. Most of it is too personal to post about, but here’s one of the Blackout Poems I “wrote” that I am especially proud of, “Beyond the Horizon.”

belonging
a sense of being rooted
a memory profound, sacred
within space that is desire
a living source of the present.

We live
one to another,
the memory of a horizon that is not closed off.

New Music: Parachute Youth, “Can’t Get Better Than This.”

I plan to listen once, and then I find myself hitting “replay” ten times.

Cool Sites Whose Mission is to Find and Share the Cool Stuff.

Here’s just two of them:

“The Cool Hunter,” (where I first saw the above video). On their “about us” page, they explain that their site “celebrates creativity in all of its modern manifestations…what’s cool, thoughtful, innovative and original.”

“Kirtsy“: This site’s “about” statement says “Kirtsy is just like that friend who always finds the best stuff. Only better…art, design, products, pins, photos, and projects…curated by some of the most interesting people online.”

100 Ways

“100 Ways to Live a Better Life” and “100 Ways to Screw Up Your Life.” Which list looks more like your life?

Deva Cards

This originally came to me from Susannah Conway’s most recent “Something for the Weekend” post, (in fact, lots of things from my “Something Good” posts come from her–she’s amazing). Hiro Boga shares these cards on her website. I tried it, because I love divination: picking a random line from a sacred text, tarot readings, throwing I-Ching coins, dream interpretation, Q-Cards qcasting, or any such oracle through which the universe might send me a message.

So, I typed my intention, “I intend to rest and restore,” shuffled the cards, and got the word “Transformation.”

I had to think a bit about what that might mean for me, and then it came to me, like a lighting bolt: my guiding word for the next year is “retreat.” I was feeling a bit sad the other day, thinking about words other people had selected, things like “brave,” “leap,” “shine,” “manifest,” “adventure,” and even “conquer.” I wanted to have an exciting word too.  Retreat? That’s boring, dull.

But, transformation? This word reminded me why “retreat” is exactly the right word. Every butterfly is first a pupa in a cocoon–fat, soft, round, vulnerable, and completely still. You simply cannot transform and grow wings without that time in stasis, and therefore, you must retreat if you are looking to transform. Yes, I might feel a bit sad or even embarrassed by my blobby, fat, slow self while the rest of the world is happily crawling around chewing on stuff, or floating in the sky on their beautiful wings, but I have to remember I am exactly where I should be, things are unfolding just as they should. It is right, true, and completely natural.

Just like savasana pose in yoga, this quiet and stillness and surrender is necessary to integrate the body and mind with the practice, to assimilate and process the practice into an embodied whole.  In the same way, off the mat, deep change needs a balance of deep rest and contemplation to allow our innate wisdom to work, for integration to happen.

Shit Girls Say

I might be offended by these, if I weren’t laughing so hard.

The Universe Says “Yes,” Again.

Chris Guillebeau, author of “The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World” and organizer the World Domination Summit (which I get to attend this year), mentioned one of my posts in his most recent blog post, “2011 Annual Review: Looking Forward.” Needless to say, my blog has gotten a lot of extra hits today. I write this blog for other reasons, but it’s still nice to be noticed sometimes–really nice.

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