This week: Say YES
1/25/10
How often do you say No? Me, all the time! This week pick one day, just one day, and answer all Yes or No questions with a definitive YES. Try it, see what happens. Don't tell anyone what you are doing just start saying yes. I know once Alec figures out what's going on it will be total mayhem but who knows. Saying yes more often just might teach me something.
Read about how to boost your potential with just that one little word. And how to get more out of life.
Let me know what happened, I want to hear the YES stories!
This week: Get Involved
1/18/10
Today we remember and celebrate a great man. A man who stood for equality, peace, and a commitment to getting involved. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. "We shall have to repent in this generation , not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of the good people "
In his spirit today, get involved. If you are not already, register to vote: http://www.rockthevote.com/
Or contact your state Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm or Congress people: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/
No matter what you stand for, it is time to get involved, make your voice heard. www.getinvolved.gov/
This week: Learn
1/11/10
This week vow to learn something new every day. Here is a re-posting from www.lifehack.org (For the full article click here.)
There are a lot of good, practical reasons to make learning something new a part of your daily routine, but the best reason has nothing to do with practicality — we are learning creatures, and the lifelong practice of learning is what makes us humans and our lives worthwhile. If that idealistic musing’s not enough, here’s some more down-to-earth benefits:
- Learning across a wide range of subjects gives us a range of perspectives to call on in our own narrow day-to-day areas of specialization.
- Learning helps us more easily and readily adapt to new situations.
- A broad knowledge of unfamiliar situations feeds innovation by inspiring us to think creatively and providing examples to follow.
- Learning deepens our character and makes us more inspiring to those around us.
- Learning makes us more confident.
- Learning instills an understanding of the historical, social, and natural processes that impact and limit our lives.
- And, like I said, there’s the whole “making like worth living” thing.
There is, after all, a reason the term “well-read” is a compliment.
With the entire world of knowledge just a few mouse-clicks away, it has never been easier than it is right now to learn something new and unexpected every day. Here are a few simple ways to make expanding your horizons a part of your daily routine:
- Subscribe to Wikipedia’s “Featured Article” list. Every day, Wikipedia posts an article selected from its vast repository of entries to it’s Daily-article-l subscribers. If you were a subscriber today, you would have recently discovered that Daylight Saving Time was first proposed by William Willett in 1907 and adopted during World War I as a way to conserve coal. You might have also been interested to find out that Kazakhstan discontinued Daylight Saving Time in 2005 because of alleged health risks associated with changed sleep patterns.
- Read The Free Dictionary’s homepage or subscribe to its feeds. The Free Dictionary has several daily features on its front page, including Article of the Day (RSS), In the News (RSS), This Day in History (RSS), and Today’s Birthday (RSS). One recent day’s stories told the history of the Hell’s Angels, the identity of the new “7 Wonders of the World”, the origin of the first cultured pearl, and the life story of one of the world’s most prominent tenors.
- Subscribe to the feed at Your Daily Art (RSS). Every day you’ll be confronted with a classic work of art to contemplate, along with a few notes about the piece. If you were subscribed right now, you might have recently seen Man Ray’s intriguing and playful “Le Violin d’Ingres” and Frank Weston Benson’s luminous “Red and Gold”.
- Subscribe to the feeds at Did You Know? and Tell Me Why?. These sites are both run by an R. Edmondson, who certainly knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. Updates are slightly less than daily, but I like the two sites so much I couldn’t leave them off this list. If you were a subscriber to these sites, you’d have recently learned why clouds are white, what the European Union is, the French terms for the days of the week and the months of the year, and the history of the development of public health efforts in response to the hazards of the Industrial Revolution.
This week: Choose
1/4/10
Last year instead of making a new years resolution Ave and I decided on a word instead. My word for 2009 was Purge and I have to say, it was way better than just making idol resolutions. All throughout the year I kept purge in the back of my head calling on it much more often that I had really anticipated. I liked having a word driving, influencing, everything in the background much better than a check off list of accomplishments. It seemed less of a "have too" and more of a friendly shove. This year, while I could very easily just recycle purge because honestly, there is a depth to that word that I have not yet explored, I am choosing another. Can you guess? Yes, Choose is the word for 2010.
Averill and I like everything around us to be right. In our heads there is always the right choice, the right way to do something. And really, so much of the time we will refrain from decision making (I know, I am putting it mildly) if we can't make the right choice. Analysis Paralysis as we so affectionately call it. So this year, 2010, we are just going to choose. No more waiting for the right thing, no more holding off decisions for years because we don't really know if it is the "right choice". This year Choose is the word.
What about you? This is your first installment of the Andersilliams Happiness Project, are you participating? What is your 2010 word?
an unrelated picture, here is our little NYE crew
Ransom Note.
1/2/10
The Lego Stormtroopers, Knights and Skeletons have captured Strawberry Shortcake. They are holding her ransom and expect payment immediately!
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