Tag Archives: Jeff Oaks

Something Good

2 Replies
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.

Something Good

2 Replies

1. Good stuff from Marc and Angel Hack Life: 7 Things to Remember When You Feel Discouraged and Defeated and 10 Courageous Ways to Live Life Without Regrets.

2. Good stuff from Derrick Clifton: 10 Celebrities Who Had the Perfect Response to Fat Shaming and Kelly Clarkson’s Response to Criticism of Her Weight Deserves a Standing Ovation.

3. Wisdom from John Lubbock:

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

4. Classic Vegan Caesar with Avocado & Chickpeas recipe. Looks yummy.

5. Bill Murray’s Dharma Talk on What It’s Like to Be You.

6. Why I stopped giving a shit about my size.

7. Questions of Priority on Zen Habits.

8. Good stuff from Be More With Less: The Life Altering Practice of Making Cuts and The Challenge of Not Doing.

9. 3 Ways to Responsibly and Compassionately Respond to Panhandling.

10. 39 Stunning Images Of Women At Work All Over The World.

11. Pieces about Lisa Bonchek Adams on The New York Times: Lisa Bonchek Adams Dies at 45; Chronicled Fight With Breast Cancer and Remembering Lisa Adams.

12. After decades in prison, first day outside a shock for Colorado parolee, the first in a five-part series on former inmate Kevin Monteiro and the state’s parole system.

13. How I learned to live in my body from Susannah Conway.

14. how to dismantle the patriachy from Sas Petherick.

15. From Jamaica to Minnesota to Myself on The New York Times Magazine.

16. Telling Them a Story from Laurie Wagner.

17. The Side of the Oklahoma Racist Frat Story That Nobody Is Talking About.

18. Good stuff on Medium: Why Work Is Broken: The Changing Face of Vocation and Why It Matters, and I’m Not Pregnant, and Why I Live At The P.O.

19. Kids Are Super Ultra Mega Fucking Weird on Terrible Minds.

20. 3 Reasons Your Employees Hate Their Jobs.

21. Dutch students can live in nursing homes rent-free (as long as they keep the residents company).

22. Good stuff on Bored Panda: Rescued Magpie Becomes Lifelong Friend With The Family That Saved Her Life and Urban Treehouse Uses 150 Trees To Protect Residents From Noise And Pollution.

23. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön:

In the early seventies a friend kept telling me, “Whatever you do, don’t try to make those feelings go away.” His advice went on: “Anything you can learn about working with your sense of discouragement or your sense of fear or your sense of bewilderment or your sense of feeling inferior or your sense of resentment—anything you can do to work with those things—do it, please, because it will be such an inspiration to other people.”

That was really good advice. So when I would start to become depressed, I would remember, “Now wait a minute. Maybe I just have to figure out how to rouse myself genuinely, because there are a lot of people suffering like this, and if I can do it, they can do it.” I felt a sense of interconnectedness. “If a schmuck like me can do it, anybody can do it.” That’s what I used to say, that if a miserable person like me—who’s completely caught up in anger and depression and betrayal—if I can do it, then anyone can do it, so I’m going to try.

24. the ripple effect, redux from Chookooloonks.

25. Baby Steps from Jeff Oaks.

26. Homeless Former U.N.C. Player Balks at Efforts to Help Him from The New York Times.

27. Wisdom from Jiddu Krishnamurti, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

28. Confessions of an Uneducated Queer, by Lauren Zuniga.

29. Ellie Goulding – Take Me to Church (Cover).

30. Ebola Survivor Ashoka Mukpo: “I Knew I Had to Practice” on Lion’s Roar.

31. Diet doesn’t cure disease. And it’s irresponsible to say otherwise from Sarah Wilson.

32. Paul Kalanithi, writer and neurosurgeon, dies at 37 and his essays How Long Have I Got Left? and Before I Go.

33. Good stuff from Tiny Buddha: 52 Ways to Tell Someone You Love and Appreciate Them and 40 Ways to Give Yourself a Break.

34. Make Yourself Comfortable from Rachel Cole.

35. Finding Your Personal Magic (and Mine) on The Mojo Lab.

36. How to Use Your Work to Get a Better Life from Laura Simms.

37. What Yoga Taught Me About the Balanced Life on The New York Times.

38. The Problem With ‘Fat Talk’ on The New York Times.

39. 10 things I learned while writing my last book from Austin Kleon.

40. Shared on Susannah’s Something for the Weekend list: Frittata Two Ways + New Zealand and 23 Things Only People Who Love Spending Time Alone Will Understand.

41. Good stuff from Dances with Fat: Say Something Sunday – Fat Joke Edition and Body Shaming Baby Onesies.

42. Water For Elephants Author Sara Gruen Reflects On The Life Of A Writer.

43. Wisdom from Anne Lamott, “I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.”

44. Double and half (freelancer math) from Seth Godin.

45. Good stuff from Alexandra Franzen: Your reasons will always win the battle, and Email guidelines for the world, and Gold Interview with Alexandra Franzen.

46. #36: Food Sanity, a podcast interview with Isabel Foxen Duke.

47. Wisdom from Eve Ensler, (thanks for sharing, Kirsten),

I was raised in America. All value lies in the future, in the dream, in production. There is no present tense. There is no value in what is, only in what might be made or exploited from what already exists. Of course the same was true for me. I had no inherent value. Without work or effort, without making myself into something significant, without proving my worth, I had no right or reason to be here. Life itself was inconsequential unless it led to something. Unless the tree would be wood, would be house, would be table, what value was there to tree?

48. What Keeps Me Up at Night (and It’s Not My Bladder) by Lisa Sadikman.