Category Archives: The New York Times

Something Good

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littleganesh1. The Wild Call of Selfishness from Mara Glatzel, which says,

All of the good that you will do on this planet – all of the relationships you will build, work you will create, and lives that you will impact – relies squarely on how well you take care of yourself and how much space you allow yourself in your own life.

Also from Mara, In Service to Your Big Dream.

2. Weekend Treats are back on Visible and Real.

3. Note from the Universe, “Hey, Jill, what if, instead of waiting for everything to be perfect, we start living your dreams this week, to any degree we can?”

4. Thailand’s White Temple Looks Like It Came Down From Heaven from Bored Panda.

5. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,

The purpose of healing is not to be forever happy; that is impossible. The purpose of healing is to be awake. And to live while you are alive instead of dying while you are alive. Healing is about being broken and whole at the same time. Healing is about opening our hearts, not closing them. It is about softening the places in us that won’t let love in. Healing is a process.

6. Good stuff from Viral Nova: Barefoot Street Performer Stuns The Audience With Her Soulful Voice, and Japanese Artist Delivers Beautiful Paper Works Of Art, and These 31 Google Street View Pictures Are Hilarious, and Tiny Houses That Are Cooler Than Mansions.

7. Wisdom from Jessica Patterson,

Through kindness, strength arises. Not force, control, defense, manipulation, or intimidation. Those strategies keep us disconnected, tense, and ultimately far more breakable. Whether you’re talking hamstrings or heart strings, the real power is in being kind. And real kindness requires you show up open and receptive to what is (vs what you want).

8. Good stuff from Upworthy: Some People Came Out With A Cool New Kind Of Poster. When You Hang It, People Cry From Happiness. and This Might Be Jon Stewart’s Best Rant Ever. Because Ferguson.

9. “Wild”: Telluride Review. I can’t wait to see this movie.

10. 3 Things I Know About Becoming a Writer on Be More With Less. Word.

11. 7 Discipline-Mastering Practices and How to Breathe on Zen Habits.

12. The 4-Year-Old’s Workday on McSweeney’s.

13. Support Jes Baker Creating World Change. I really want to see this work, for many reasons.

14. Good stuff from Elephant Journal: Your Problems Are Blessings (really, do the exercise she suggests — it’s powerful), and Why One Life Hack Can Change Everything, and The interview Moment that changed Oprah’s Life (and mine).

15. My Facebook Friend Lived a Good Life and Then Died Too Soon on New York Observer.

16. Comic Strip of Alan Watts’ Lecture: “What If Money Was No Object?” (thanks for sharing the link, Sandi).

17. Reboot of Die Trying: One Man’s Year of Digital Detox from Outside Online.

18. Good stuff from Treehugger: Romantic tiny forest home built in 6 weeks for $4,000 and What would our homes look like if designed around how we use them?

19. The Most Amazing Stone Walls You Will See Today on Twisted Sifter.

20. Sit a Spell on SouleMama.

21. What no one wants to say about Ferguson!, a very Buddhist perspective on recent events.

22. A Life of Balance: Turn Off The News from Jack Kornfield.

23. This Is What It’s Like To Be An Unarmed Black Man In America from Funny or Die on Huffington Post.

24. This College Student Will Carry Around Her Dorm Mattress Until Her Alleged Rapist Is Punished.

25. Good stuff from MindBodyGreen: How To Do Downward Dog (Cute Infographic!) and 30 Amazing Photos That Will Make You Wish You Were At Burning Man 2014.

26. Why You Might Be Asking the Wrong Question About Suicide from Todd Mitchell.

27. Navigate Your Life: Karen Walrond from Jennifer Louden.

28. How Can Men Help Prevent Sexual Assault? on The New York Times.

29. “The List Of Rules For Women” By Jay Smooth Gets Everything Right on Huffington Post.

30. IKEA’s 2015 Catalog Launch Is the Perfect Spoof of iPad Ads.

31. On wholeness & loving ourselves realistically from Susannah Conway.

32. White Trash Buddhist: Do you have to break the bank to break into the upper middle way? A Kentucky native shows us what practice looks like on minimum wage on Tricycle.

33. What This Puppy Does After Noticing The Old Dog Having A Nightmare Is ADORABLE! And At 0:42…OMG!

34. The place I want to get back to from Judy Clement Wall.

35. Shared on Chookooloonks’ this was a good week list: Naterade : Being good to each other is so important, guys, and The Myth of Effortless, and Jennifer Orkin Lewis on Lisa Congdon’s blog.

36. force creates fear, fear destroys trust… from Pia Jane Bijkerk.

37. I wrote an article no one wanted from Paul Jarvis, (thanks for sharing the link, Laura).

38. Abandon hope on Painted Path.

39. Us/Them from Dallas Clayton.

40. We Must Move Into Love from Sandi Amorim.

41. Good stuff from Austin Kleon: Notes to self and What your days look like.

42. 23 Dog Thoughts That Will Change Your Outlook On Everyday Dog Life.

43. I went to the mountains and remembered why we have kids on Renegade Mothering.

44. 50 Essays Guaranteed to Make You a Better Person on Flavorwire.

45. Where good things happen from Christina Rosalie. *sigh*

Something Good

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latestaprilmorning031. Wisdom from a blessing from Ronna Detrick,

I kept myself busy with so many responsibilities. I took them on because they needed to be done, but more, because they seemed like the best way to keep from feeling crazy. When I slowed down, when I rested, when I stopped, my mind fought against the silence, the space, the calm. But, in truth, silence, space, and calm was what my heart wanted most; what I needed most. It took time, but I learned that it’s not in working harder, faster, or smarter; but in sitting, resting, and leaning that feeling crazy eventually vanishes, that transformation comes, that love shows up.

2. Shared on Chookooloonks this was a good week list: On How to Approach Strangers on the Street from Humans of New York, and Artist Piotr Bockenheim Puts Your Easter Egg Decorating to Shame with His Intricately Carved Goose Shells.

3. Pain is Part of Being Human: 4 Lessons to Help Reduce Suffering on Tiny Buddha.

4. Wisdom from Anna Quindlen, “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

5. Good stuff on Medium: Paul Moved Into My Apartment Seeking a Fresh Start. Then He Died, and How to Bounce Back After Burning Out, and 7 Things You Need to Stop Doing to Be More Productive, Backed By Science.

6. Vega Cottage, shared on Friday Finds by SF Girl by Bay. This is the kind of place I live in my dreams.

7. 3 ways to create a blog you love, good advice from Lune, by way of Pugly Pixel.

8. Truthbombs from Danielle LaPorte: “Show the universe how much you love yourself,” and “You’re on the verge of a miracle.” They seem related, don’t they? And, Can’t decide which idea to pursue? Here’s THE key question + 10 more to help you choose, also from Danielle.

9. PaperSync, a company that will digitize your handwritten journals.

10. The Miracle of the Self-Compassion Habit from Zen Habits.

11. A Master’s in Chick Lit on The New York Times Opinion Pages.

12. 10 Simple Ways to Worry Less from Be More With Less.

13. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,

Emotional eating is an attempt to avoid the absence (of love, comfort, knowing what to do) when we find ourselves in the desert of a particular moment, feeling, situation. In the process of resisting the emptiness, in the act of turning away from our feelings, of trying and trying again to lose the same twenty, fifty, eighty pounds, we ignore what could utterly transform us.

But when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we evoke that in us that is not a story, not caught in the past, not some old image of ourselves. We evoke divinity itself. And in doing so, we can hold emptiness, old hurts, fear in our cupped hands and behold our missing hearts.

14. Tiny Hamsters Eating Tiny Burritos – Episode 1.

15. How to get lucky by Mark Morford, (thanks for sharing this, Laurie).

16. Cute Alaskan Malamute asks his human to play on Dog Heirs.

17. Super Soul Short: Inside the Mind Behind Mutts, (my favorite comic strip). One of my favorite parts of this video was this:

“The closer we grow to our inner light, the more we feel the natural urge to share that light with others. The meaning of work, whatever its form, is that it be used to heal the world. Love is the most powerful fuel in any endeavor. The most important question to ask about any work is ‘How does this serve the world?’”

~quote from a desk calendar, April 20, that hangs over artist and creator of the Mutts comic strip Patrick McDonnell’s desk, which he paraphrases as “Love is the most important thing in any endeavor.”

18. Suspended Fields of Flowers from Rebecca Louise Law on Visual News.

19. Parents call cops on teen for giving away banned book; it backfires predictably on Death and Taxes.

20. 30 Problems That Only Introverts Will Understand. #17 Is So True It Hurts, (thanks for sharing, Jeff).

21. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

At some point, we need to stop identifying with our weaknesses and shift our allegiance to our basic goodness. It’s highly beneficial to understand that our limitations are not absolute and monolithic, but relative and removable.

22. Wisdom from Eve Ensler,

An activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.

23. In one of the latest Hopeful World newsletters, Jen Lemen described what would happen first if you decided love is the most important thing. About what comes next, she says,

This is what must come next. The breaking. Because without it your heart will be two sizes too small, and you cannot have a small heart for the kind of love that is waiting for you. No. Your heart will have to be much bigger, much, much bigger. So big that some of the places in it will be empty. So big that the outer exterior of it will not seal the insides completely, so that someone passing by who would like to peek in will actually be able to make out your shadow in between the cracks where the light gets in.

This big cracked heart will be needed for your new life, for all the love that is waiting, so the little heart has to go. Don’t despair when you feel it breaking. Breaking is reserved for the most lion-hearted among us, and you are of that number. Didn’t you realize? We knew it from the second we saw you, acting so foolishly for your ridiculous, far-fetched dreams.

Jen is one of the only people who can give me the bad news, the hard truth, and I feel okay about it. Part of me wants to share the whole newsletter with you, but instead I’ll just tell you to sign up to get it in your own inbox.

24. How to write to someone you admire + become their BFF. (And why maybe … you shouldn’t.) from Alexandra Franzen.

25. 18 Reasons to Give Up Trying to Live Up to Everyone’s Expectations from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

26. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook, in which she says,

Don’t wait for the world to clear out time and space for your dreams and your art. It doesn’t happen that way. The world rushes in, and always will. Wait for things to be perfect and you’ll die waiting. Push back a bit. You go get yourself a kitchen timer and clear out your own little space. You’ll be amazed what happens.

Every single day. 30 minutes. I’m serious.

Word.