Life is Limitless | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Creating a Lovely Morning on Zen Habits.

2. Wisdom from Fr. Alfred D’Souza, a quote shared by Courtney Carver,

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last in dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

3. Also from Courtney, on Be More With Less, 3 Simple Ways to Be More Creative (and why it’s important).

4. Eight ways to be (more) here and (more) happy on A Design So Vast.

5. Wisdom from Jessica Patterson,

In my experience, one of the greatest litmus tests of spiritual maturation –that is, how well your practice is working–comes when we bump up against the challenges. Embodying–in thought, word, and deed–what it is you profess to practice/study is easy when life goes according to your plan. But the real measure–and arguably, the greatest teacher–arises from our responses to life’s inevitable disappointments, frustrations, and obstacles. If your response to difficult times is to react (re-act, reproduce) with the same old habitual behavior, based on worn out, old narratives about yourself (or others), then your practice becomes that much more vital; your practice can be what creates space and awareness between the feelings we have and the conclusion we draw about them. If you can remain consciously committed to your center, your Self, when the rug gets pulled up beneath you…and you can be kind and spacious and patient when things don’t go “your way,” you will come to know your progress more honestly than any other time.

6. What in the world is a “blog hop”? from Two Poppies Creative.

7. Green in May on SouleMama.

8. What Happens When You Sing An 800 Year Old Icelandic Hymn In A Train Station? THIS.

9. Wisdom from Maya Angelou, “In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”

10. the (sacred) art of breaking yourself open from Justine Musk.

11. Baby’s first LOL.

12. Wisdom from Lao Tzu, “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

13. These 7 Simple Photos Reduced Me To Heartbroken Tears. I Never Saw It Coming. on Viral Nova.

14. Wisdom from Geneen Roth, “Forgiving yourself expresses a willingness to learn from your fragility and your fallibility instead of pretending that they are not there,” and,

Of this I am certain: Something happens every time I stop fighting with the way things are. Something happens to every one of my students when they stop running their familiar programs about fear and deficiency and emptiness. I don’t know what to call this turn of events or the freshness that follows it but I know what it feels like: it feels like relief. It feels like infinite goodness. Like a distillation of every sweet fragrance, every astonishing beauty and every haunting melody you’ve ever heard . It feels like the essence of tenderness compassion joy peace dark starry night dazzling day. Like love itself. And in the moment you feel it you recognize that you are it and that you’ve been here all along, waiting for your return.

15. What hill running, meditation and achieving your dreams have in common from Life is Limitless.

16. A man, a photo and the long search to find the person in it, a story on Sports Illustrated about a picture from Humans of New York.

17. How to Not Go Insane Being an Artist on Indie Kindred.

18. How To Get A Whole Lot Of Sh*t Done In A Day on MindBodyGreen.

19. A Talk with Patrick McDonnell, coauthor of Guardians of Being, (and one of my favorite cartoonists).

20. Yoga with Adriene. I really like her teaching style, and she’s got some great free videos, if you are interested in practicing alone but with instruction.

21. Got Blogger’s Block? Here Are 50 Ways To Kick Its Ass! from Gala Darling, (shared by Britt Bravo on Facebook).

22. 13 Famous Writers on Overcoming Writer’s Block on Flavorwire, (shared by Britt Bravo on Facebook).

23. This is a commercial for Chevy, and it’s pretty sweet.

1. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

We all have parts of ourselves that need working on. We all think thoughts that aren’t the best thoughts we could be thinking. We all do things we wish we would have done better, or differently, or not at all. We all make mistakes, every single day….every single one of us. And then, we all wake up every day with lots of chances to start over. It is one of the miracles of life…Let yesterday go, be done with it. Walk onto your light-filled path and make today a better day.

2. A Pathetic Internet Troll Called This Mom’s Little Boy Ugly. Her Reply Is Perfection. on Viral Nova.

3. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

The opposite of samsara (the cycle of suffering) is when all the walls fall down, when the cocoon completely disappears and we are totally open to whatever may happen, with no withdrawing, no centralizing into ourselves. That is what we aspire to, the warrior’s journey. That is what stirs us: leaping, being thrown out of the nest, going through the initiation rites, growing up, stepping into something that’s uncertain and unknown.

4. Yo Oprah, I’mma Let You Finish But Amy Poehler Has The Best Body Image Advice Of All Time on Upworthy.

5. You are a writer. So, write. Deeply. on Rebelle Society.

6. Prompt of the Week: Junk Mail Poetry from Wolverine Farm Publishing Co. & Bookstore, and my dear friend Chloé, the 2014 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins.

7. The generosity boomerang from Seth Godin.

8. Five things you can do to overcome fear on Life is Limitless.

9. The Bite I Chose Not to Take, from Mara Glatzel.

10. Truthbomb from Danielle LaPorte, “Make the necessary adjustments for your life to become more meaningful.”

11. A Conversation with Julia Cameron about Channeling Your Creativity on Huffington Post.

12. The ultimate guide to naming your “thing” from Alexandra Franzen.

13. Good stuff from Zen Habits: The Habit Action List and The Reality of This Moment.

14. Be Yourself – Short Documentary.

15. 6 Things That I Understand About The Fat Acceptance Movement from the Militant Baker.

16. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,

For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.

17. Good stuff from Bored Panda: Photographer Takes Stunning Surreal Photos With An Old $50 Film Camera and WTF? 22 Of The Weirdest and Most Unexplainable Pictures Ever and Hidden Macro World Revealed By Japanese Photographer Miki Asai.

18. Use These 19 Genius Cleaning Hacks This Spring. I Can’t Believe I Never Thought Of #13 Til Now. on Viral Nova. Seriously, #13 is brilliant.

19. Success, failure and the drive to keep creating, Elizabeth Gilbert’s second TED Talk, in which she says,

For me, going home meant returning to the work of writing because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing, which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that’s how I pushed through it.

And,

Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. So that might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service, it might be raising corgis, I don’t know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.

Word.

20. The Moment This Man Finds Out He’s Going To Be A Grandpa Will Make You Tear Up on Huffington Post. Somehow “we’re getting a new puppy” never manages to elicit the same emotion…

21. Friday’s Confession: I Was Copied from Tiffany Han.

22. How to Be a Writer by M. Molly Backes on Medium.

23. The art of Sarah Jarrett.

24. By Another Way, a poem by Jan Richardson shared by Ronna Detrick on her blog.

25. My Formula for Stumbling Through with Grace from Be More with Less.

26. Wisdom from Kristin Noelle, who describes so perfectly where I am right now,

…those stretches when you’re still close enough to some “before” version of yourself to remember him or her well, to still have his or her knee-jerk feelings and reactions to things….but you’re not that version of yourself anymore either, and you’re noticing a whole new paradigm, a whole new way of being in the world, vying for attention and time.

27. Newspaper + marker = poetry: The story behind my newspaper blackout poems, on Medium from Austin Kleon.

28. Shared on Rowdy Kittens Happy Links: The Scratch Interview with Cheryl Strayed, and On the Long Haul from Dani Shapiro, and 10 Ways I Embraced Simplicity and You Can Too from Sandra Pawula.

29. What I Wish I Knew After My MFA Ended on the Brevity blog.

30. New Age Bullshit Generator.

31. Writing Practice – why it’s time to stop thinking of writing as a profession by Damien Walter.

32. Teachasana, “An online resource for yoga teachers and teachers-in-training.”

33. On writing, courage, and showing up on Life with Lucia.

34. 28 T-Shirts For When You Literally Cannot from BuzzFeed.

35. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook, Are you feeling more afraid than you need to feel?

36. How To Stop Making A Big Deal About Your Problems, Pema Chödrön on MindBodyGreen.

37. Having No Expectations: The Secret to Freedom and Happiness.