A wonderful woman I’m familiar with is the absolute essence of New York Society – except that she has spent her entire life living in the South.
But I also find it interesting that someone who so clearly loves both New York, with its theatre scene, and Arkansas, where she has lived most of her life excluding graduate school, has found a balance between the two.
Have you ever driven past an accident scene and craned your neck to see what happened? In life, I’m a rubbernecker. I want to know and do everything. I want to be as informed and active in life as possible.
In my previous life, before I threw up my hands (and my career as a financial trader), moved to Wisconsin and started living a life I truly enjoyed, I didn’t have time for a hobby. I was like the guy in the recent New Yorker cartoon lying on the beach with his laptop. He says to his wife, “It’s not that I’m a workaholic. I just work to relax.”
If anyone had asked me if I had a hobby I would probably have said, “Yeah, I work. That’s how I spend my free time.” Well, as you probably agree, working between eighty and one hundred hours every week is not exactly conducive to having a hobby, and no, I don’t think working really counts as a hobby.
I love the saying that love is a verb. I believe it’s true, first of all, and I think there’s something very powerful about a phrase that almost everyone seems to recognize or remember hearing.
Lately I’ve been thinking about compassion, and I wondered if it could be a verb.
If you wear glasses or contacts, or if you’ve ever seen someone put on a new pair of glasses, you understand that when you don new glasses, the world looks fresh and new. You notice things you’ve never seen before, and even though you may see flaws like dirty windows or cracks in the sidewalk, you are so excited just to see everything that you don’t even notice these imperfections.
Putting on new glasses gives you an automatic positive outlook. You may not have ever thought about it like that, but isn’t it true? Don’t you feel better about everything, all the time, for quite a while after putting on new glasses?
How much do you listen to music? Do you listen more or less than you did when you were younger? Do you enjoy music? Do you have a favorite singer, a favorite group, a favorite song?
Many of us, when we were in college, listened to music to study because it “helped us concentrate.” But somewhere after college, a lot of us stopped listening so much. Maybe in the car. Maybe not. We don’t spend as much time with music on because we are too busy doing other things.
Why not dip back into that well?
I’ll be Karen Ellenbecker’s guest on her weekly educational non-traditional investment radio program titled Money Sense.
My guest spot on Money Sense can be heard in the greater Milwaukee metro area this Sunday, September 16th, from 12:00 Noon to 1:00 PM CST.
Listen live via the Web at: (10:00 AM PST, 11:00 AM MST, 12:00 Noon CST, 1:00 PM EST)
Can the achievement of happiness be predicted in any meaningful sense? Simply put, yes it can. If you have close (safe, nurturing, comforting) personal relationships and fulfilling work to do, and you know yourself and what you are about, you can predict that you will have enough good things in your life to bring you lasting happiness. No life is without conflict, pain or even moments of fear, but overall happiness counter-balances all the trials and challenges life hands you. If you have those things working in your life that generate a bone-deep level of happiness you have an automatic cushion against getting bounced on your ear by the unexpected.
Impossible to define, yet something that each and every one of us experiences, gut feelings are unique, personal experiences that we’ve been taught to be very wary of, especially in this day and age of instant, easily-accessible information.
But what exactly comprises a gut feeling?
Ok … you have all your productivity tools in place. You have a rock-solid time management system. You have a seemingly-workable plan. But something isn’t quite right. You feel that, now, more than ever, you’re being stretched beyond your limits.
Maybe what’s missing isn’t all the tools and techniques. Maybe it’s your strategy.
I am reminded by the folks over at Freakonomics (thanks Melissa Lafsky) that today is World Sauntering Day.
Yes, it’s one of those freaky (no pun intended) American holidays that originated in the 1970s when W.T. Rabe, a one-time publicist in Detroit, a director of public relations at Lake Superior State University, and manager of a hotel in Mackinac Island, Michigan, created a publicity stunt to encourage visitors and resident of tthe island to saunter, and to enjoy the beauty around them. If you’ve ever been to Mackinac Island, you can see why Rabe’s campaign was so successful.
Positive Psychology is the most popular class at Harvard University, having enrolled 855 students last semester.
Are you astounded?
What attracts so many students to study happiness?
Is such a class really needed in today’s world?
Feeling the blues from all the rain we’ve had this past week? Otherwise looking for some cheery news? Looking for a good read this weekend?
There’s a great article in Men’s Health magazine that you must read.
Imagine my surprise when I picked up a copy on My Midwest Magazine, the in-flight monthly of Midwest Airlines, to find an article titled Smooth Landing quoting the Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk.
Why was I taken aback? I’m a Penelope Trunk reader, after all. I shouldn’t have been caught unaware, as she’s featured in many publications and sites. What struck me was the topic: Getting back to work after your vacation is over.
I will present present Slow Down FAST – 5 Secrets to Success: How to Begin Living YOUR Life YOUR Way in a groundbreaking FREE teleseminar event on Tuesday evening, September 11th.
According to a recent study of 1,148 adults nearly two thirds of parents say they don’t spend enough time with their children, while half say they must make their job a top priority – even if it affects their family life.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
David B. Bohl used to work 100 hours a week. His family took a backseat to his fast-moving, high-paying career, and he eventually paid the price in the form of exhaustion, stress and a non-existent family life. Bohl has since recovered from this work fanatic, pressure cooker life and has done a complete 180. He now focuses completely on his values, beliefs and ideals, and as a result enjoys total life balance between work and family, and coaches people on how to do the same.
Jerry Seinfeld, as told to Brad Isaac, said that: “in order to accomplish something you have to work at it every day. Get one of
Ben Casnocha is a very young CEO who started his first company when he was 12 years old. Then, when he was 14 he started
