Tag Archives: Jeff Oaks

Something Good

3 Replies

1. Loving Your Perfect Self, Before Improving It and Comfort Foods Gone Awry from Eat 2 Love.

2. Good stuff from MindBodyGreen: 30 Things To Do Before You Die, and Gluten-Free Maple Granola (a recipe), and 5 Tips To Ditch Needless Pressures & Let Feeling Good Be Your Guide, and It’s Monday! Make These Gluten-Free Autumn Cookies! (I don’t care that these are supposed to be “good for you,” they look delicious), and Gluten-Free & Dairy-Free Mint Chocolate Superfood Snack Balls (same goes here), and 13 Small Choices That Can Change Your Life In Great Ways, and 21 Bad Habits To Avoid If You Want To Be Happy.

3. Family stories: The ones we claim, and the ones that claim us from Christina Rosalie, in which she says,

More than ever I can feel the way certain embers in my ribcage flare up with the unavoidable heat of this: to write is everything. And increasingly, the only thing. Over and over again I find my way to this truth, even as discovering what it truly means for my everyday life is still an act in progress.

Word.

4. 20 Funny Sidewalk Signs from Pleated Jeans.

5. Cinnamon Roasted Sweet Potato recipe from The Healthy Chef.

6. 19 Adorable Ways To Decorate A Light Switch Cover from BuzzFeed DIY.

7. Perfect Day from Jeff Oaks.

8. Actually, you’re the guru. Notes on resonance and respect. from Danielle LaPorte.

9. Are You Buying The Healthiest Frozen Veggie Burger? on Food Babe, which led me to Think Twice Before Buying This Type of Burger.

10. Feed Your Roots With Roots from Meg Worden.

11. Good stuff from Elephant Journal: 10 Tips for Teaching a Larger-Bodied Yogi, and The Power of Self-Worth, and What’s the Most Important Question We Ask?

12. Everyday Objects Turned Into Imaginative Illustrations by Javier Pérez on Bored Panda.

13. The 24 Most Hipster Things That Have Ever Happened from BuzzFeed.

14. Me, the overly sensitive child, by Anne Lamott on Salon, in which she says something that made me have to stop reading and weep,

As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, “Some people have a thick skin and you don’t. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you’re not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.”

15. Unchaining Creativity: Thirty Ways to Say I Love You on Scoutie Girl.

16. Should is a Warning Sign from Shauna Niequist.

17. Present Tense: Allie Brosh, Donald Glover, And Hurting Right Now.

18. The 19 Most Relatable Tweets From Mindy Kaling on BuzzFeed. There is just nothing more glorious and valuable than a funny woman.

19. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook.

20. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves. By “cessation” we mean the cessation of hell as opposed to just weather, the cessation of this resistance, this resentment, this feeeling of being completely trapped and caught, trying to maintain huge ME at any cost. The teachings about recognizing egolessness sound quite abstract, but the path quality of that, the magic instruction that we have all received, the golden key is that part of the meditation technique where you recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather—the quality and the energy of the weather itself. Maybe you still have that quaky feeling or that churning feeling or that exploding feeling or that calm feeling or that dull feeling, as if you’d just been buried in the earth. You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that.

21. On Owning It from Seth Godin.

22. Wisdom from Norman Fischer,

To simply be present with our lives at the depth that meditation practice can take us to is a profound accomplishment. To inhabit our lives in this way is to meet and become the Buddha, to be touched by and to touch the divine. Cutting through our entanglements without denying them, we reach the ultimate, not by an act of transcendence, but simply by living with full awareness.

23. Meditation For Those Of Us Who Can’t Sit Still from Get to the Good.

24. 105 Action Steps to Make You Bold, Brave and Successful from The Bold Life.

25. Wisdom from Martha Beck,

You are never required to do more than you can do in peace. Right now, take a breath, return to peace, and refuse to leave.

26. 12 Simple Strategies to Create Space Each Day from Becoming Minimalist.

27. Does Life End at 35?

28. 38,445 Miles by Rachel Cole.

Something Good

5 Replies

1. Oh, hell yes, from the Bloggess.

2. On Starting Over Again, from Lisa Congdon.

3. How Depression Serves Us on Elephant Journal.

4. I need to find a dance studio, stat: Watch this 2-year-old and her mom break it down to Beyonce on Hello Giggles.

5. You are not broken or in need of fixing, a beautiful poem on Many Voices, a Sounds True blog.

6. Wisdom from Thomas Merton,

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

7. 12 Storytelling Podcasts That You Need to Be Listening To on BuzzFeed.

8. Who Sees The Real You? from Soul Pancake.

9. Kids on LOVE! from Soul Pancake.

10. Wisdom in the form of a poem by Hafiz,

We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
“O please, O please,
Come out and play.”

For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and Light!


11. Shared by Positively Present Picks: Jerk Cats Knocking Stuff Over.

12. Brene’ Brown’s new ecourse, The Gifts of Imperfection.

13. Flying Takes Getting Used To, a poem from Ken Robert.

14. Little boxes on the hillside… home to 40,000 Buddhist monks: The stunning makeshift town that has sprung up around a Tibetan monastery.

15. Pema and Me and the Essence of Life on Huffington Post, in which Robin Amos Kahn says,

The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it’s sweet and sometimes it’s bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it all together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your life experience. There is something aggressive about this approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

…all of life is to be embraced, that all experience is here to teach us important lessons, even the most painful ones, and all human beings struggle with this at some point in their lives — it is part of being alive and connected to each other.

16. This close, another beautiful post from Christina Rosalie.

17. your daily rock : trust your heart.

18. Joy Retreat, an upcoming offering from Cidgem Kobu that’s sure to be wonderful, (because everything she does is, she is).

19. 7 Things You Should Stop Expecting from Others on Marc and Angel Hack Life.

20. How to Wish Someone Well for Real in a Way that Will Blow Your Heart Wide Open from Danielle LaPorte.

21. Still Writing, a review of Dani Shapiro’s new book on A Design So Vast. I just started reading Dani’s book Devotion this weekend, and can’t wait for her latest. In Still Writing, Dani shares this quote,

The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

22. Wisdom on the Buddhist teaching of emptiness,

The actual teachings on emptiness imply an infinitely open space that allows for anything to appear, change, disappear, and reappear. The basic meaning of emptiness, in other words, is openness, or potential. At the basic level of our being, we are “empty” of definable characteristics.

23. Adorable Brothers and Best Friends: Baby and His Dog Share Strong Bond, cute pictures on Dog Heirs.

24. living ether, from Doorways Traveler.

25. How Sweet It Is, Kat McNally saying sweet things.

26. Wisdom from Tama J. Kieves,

When you’re tired, you don’t feel creative, hopeful, capable or blessed. You can’t touch the light or depths. Rest is the first step to flight. Our culture runs us ragged. Go against the grain. Don’t be so “productive.” Rest and let the sunshine break through the clouds in your soul.

27. 25 Examples Of Artistic Watercolor Tattoos from Bored Panda.

28. Go Outside: mini-mission from Be More With Less.

29. Danielle LaPorte: Living With Fire And Desire, an interview on Good Life Project.

30. Thank You from Mystic Vixen. *sob*

31. October Notes from Jeff Oaks.

32. Why Self-Compassion Helps You Meet Life’s Challenges on Psychology Today.

33. On Publication Day from Dani Shapiro.

34. This Is The Most Inspiring Yet Depressing Yet Hilarious Yet Horrifying Yet Heartwarming Grad Speech on Upworthy. Really, you should watch it — it’s awesome.

35. Is Disordered Eating The New Normal? on Do You Yoga.

36. A Note from the Universe, “Jill, you’ve done better than you know. You’ve helped more than you realize. And you’re closer than you think.”

37. Wisdom from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estès,

Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.

38. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Basic wakefulness, natural openness, is always available. This openness is not something that needs to be manufactured. When we pause, when we touch the energy of the moment, when we slow down and allow a gap, self-existing openness comes to us. It does not require a particular effort. It is available anytime. As Chögyam Trungpa once remarked, “Openness is like the wind. If you open your doors and windows, it is bound to come in.”

39. Neglected Ducks Get Their First Swim on Elephant Journal. This is what real joy, true freedom looks like.

40. Rachel Cole on The Fulfilling Life an interview with Kelly J. Dahl.

41. A new post from Hyperbole and a Half: Menace.