the revolutionary gardener.
March 25, 2013 | Filed Under Great ideas, Health, Inspiring, Plain cool, Spotlight, monday motivation | Leave a Comment
Immediately upon viewing this, it was clear this would be one of my favorite TED Talks because it’s one of my favorite ideas: grow your own food!
- Ron Finley
Mr. Finley is an urban gardener. A renegade gardener with a message we all need to hear. Our food system is a disaster and intricately tied to the medical system. Food can be medicine or poison. Your diet determines whether health or disease awaits you. One of the best way to choose health is to grow your own food.
The right to grow movement requires and deserves our attention and energy. One of my most sincere beliefs is that we will return to being stewards of the land, by choice or necessity. The earlier you choose, the better off you’ll be.
move your body.
February 17, 2013 | Filed Under Challenge, Consider this, Health, Inspiring | Leave a Comment
This generation of children growing up today are expected to die five years younger than their parents. Why? Because of inactivity. The benefits of exercise are so many that it seems silly not to. Yet, so many of us still don’t. I haven’t been to the gym since October.
Don’t judge me.
Still, movement is fundamental. An organization called Designed To Move has created “a physical action agenda”. Check it out here. We have to model healthy behavior for the youngsters to pick it up.
While I’ve fallen off my beloved fitness game for a while, I’m committed to getting back on track, not just for myself but because I want to be in the population of people that’s a part of the solution. Growing up, my mother used to say, “if you aren’t a part of the solution, you’re a part of the problem.” It annoyed me when she said it then, but it’s true.
The children are the future. Let’s teach them well.
your joy is your job.
February 7, 2013 | Filed Under Moment of Truth, My life changed when... | Leave a Comment
Everything we need to experience joy is inside us. When we seek it outside of ourselves, we miss the mark. When we defer the responsibility to someone else, eventually we find that they will repeatedly fail at the task — because it isn’t their job; it’s ours.
So many of us are looking for happiness in books, things, relationships, experiences. While they can, indeed, provide a sense of satisfaction and might even be part of our individual recipe for fulfillment, they’ll never fill the gap that remains when we don’t ourselves tend to the work of satisfying our inner lives.
reveal yourself.
February 7, 2013 | Filed Under Moment of Truth, Rewritable words | 1 Comment
learning to love curly hair
February 2, 2013 | Filed Under Health, Inspiring, Learn something, Plain cool, Read this | Leave a Comment
A long-time friend of mine, Nikki Walton of CurlyNikki has finally released her long-awaited treatise on curly and kinky coils with Better Than Good Hair. For the past five years, she’s been sharing her knowledge and building a community for those embracing the path of self-love by accepting their hair as it is and learning how to work with it as opposed to against it. Better Than Good Hair is best suited for those new or relatively new to the world of natural hair care, but also serves as a handy reference guide for those like me, who have been natural for a while but never fully went down the rabbit’s hole and could use a refresher every now and then.
I’m pretty psyched to be connected to the project, as a short essay of mine is featured. (I’m published!) My favorite thing about Nikki and her movement is how genuine and bright she is and how passionate she is about positively impacting people’s mental and emotional health as it relates to hair. She is, after all, a certified therapist.
If you know anyone who could use a more information about naturally curly hair, Better Than Good Hair is a handy reference, and especially helpful to sift through all the online information. Get your copy today.
the art of stress-free productivity
February 1, 2013 | Filed Under Consider this, Inspiring, Learn something, Pay attention | Leave a Comment
The heart of my efforts right now center around productivity, so I’m sharing productivity expert David Allen’s TedxTalk with you. Enjoy!
ATTENTION
to what has your
ATTENTION
you will give it more
ATTENTION
than it deserves.”
Great words: Sandra Cisneros
November 23, 2012 | Filed Under Rewritable words | Leave a Comment
memories to tell you the truth aren’t good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.
There should be stars for great wars like ours.
- Sandra Cisneros
committed and ardent?
October 30, 2012 | Filed Under #notetoself, Consider this, Moment of Truth | 1 Comment
It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to assemble and share my thoughts, but I’m prompted to do so now and must submit to that urge. Too often, we get caught up in doing whatever we’re doing, maybe even doing things we don’t really want to do, and ignore the internal push guiding us elsewhere. For far too long, that’s been the case with not just writing and my dedication to this craft I repeatedly abandon, but other equally and more important tasks like creating the life I want to live.
Doing so requires commitment. Tireless commitment. And the passion necessary for dedication.
I’ve wasted too much time, fearful, doubting, wavering, uncertain. And the odds are in favor of me correctly saying “so have you.”
Let’s get clear and let’s forge new and unique paths that uplift and illuminate us and those around us.
This year has been an amazing testimony of what’s possible and I see so clearly now that I’ve got to get out of my own way and you’ve got to get out of your own way so we can be so great, truly. Individually and collectively. It must happen.
Stop allowing yourself to be distracted. Focus, commit, and succeed.
How willing are you to do what it takes to get it?
“messenger”
August 16, 2012 | Filed Under #notetoself, Challenge, Consider this, Inspiring, Rewritable words | Leave a Comment
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
- Mary Oliver, Thirst
“the uses of sorrow”
August 16, 2012 | Filed Under Consider this, Inspiring, Moment of Truth, Rewritable words | 1 Comment
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
- Mary Oliver, Thirst
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