Pictures and links about things I like, whether it's material, intellectual, entrepreneurial, or great books, art, organizations, and ideas. Just for fun.
These are incredible, incredible tips, and something to always remember in those stressful moments.
(via Extreme Love)
10 GOOD REMINDERS FOR STRESSFUL TIMES:
1) Happiness is never constant, and it’s not supposed to be.
You have to fight through some bad days to earn the best days of your life. To believe that you can reach a state of happiness and stay there forever, is like the tide believing she can reach for the shoreline and remain there forever; or like a fruit tree believing that if she only holds on tighter, she can keep her fruit from dropping to the ground. Happiness is simply a series of moments that come and go and add sweetness to our lives. Learn to accept this, and the more happy moments you will have.
2) Failures are temporary situations that teach us necessary lessons.
Life’s best lessons are usually learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes. So yes, you will fail sometimes. The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant. You’ll never be 100% sure it will work, but you can always be 100% sure doing nothing won’t work. Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. So get out there and try! Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson. Win – Win.
3) Even if you can’t see it now, you are making progress.
You may not be where you want to be yet, but if you think about it, you’re no longer where you once were either. You have good reason to believe that you can trust yourself going forward. Not because you’ve always made the right choices, but because you survived the bad ones, and taken small steps in the right direction. So cry for a moment if you have to, and get it out of your system. Crying doesn’t indicate that you’re weak; since birth, it has always been a sign that you’re alive and full of potential. Once you’re done, keep going! You’re undoubtedly getting closer to where you want to be.
4) How you feel when you’re stressed is not a true measure of reality.
Just because you’re afraid, doesn’t mean you’re in danger. Just because you feel alone, doesn’t mean nobody loves you. Just because you think you might fail, doesn’t mean you will. Look beyond your doubts and keep searching for the truth. Be aware of your mental self-talk. We all talk silently to ourselves in our heads, but we aren’t always conscious of what we’re saying or how it’s affecting us. The way to overcome negative thoughts and destructive emotions is to develop opposing, positive emotions that are stronger and more powerful. Listen to your self-talk and replace negative thoughts with positive ones. The sun is always shining on some part of your life. Sometimes you just have to forget how you feel, remember what you deserve, and keep pushing forward.
5) You cannot change what you refuse to confront.
You can learn great things from your failures and mistakes when you aren’t busy denying them. If you’ve been asking the same questions for months or even years, yet are still stuck, it’s probably not that you haven’t been given the answers, but that you don’t like the answers you were given. It takes a lot of courage to admit that something needs to change, and a lot more courage still, to accept the responsibility for actually changing it. The most important step forward is taking the first step. The simple act of getting started and doing something will give you the momentum you need, and soon you’ll find yourself in a positive spiral of positive changes – one building on the other.
6) You are not what happened to you in the past.
No matter how chaotic the past has been, the future is a clean, fresh, wide open slate. You are not your past habits. You are not your past failures. You are not how others have at one time treated you. You are only who you think you are right now in this moment. You are only what you do right now in this moment.
7) Not getting what you want can be a blessing.
Not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of good luck, because it forces you reevaluate things, opening new doors to opportunities and information you would have otherwise overlooked. Remember, some things in life fall apart so that better things can fall together.
8) Being a ‘work in progress’ is a great state to be in.
Stop berating yourself for being a work in progress. Start embracing it! Because being a work in progress doesn’t mean you’re not good enough today; it means you want a better tomorrow, and you wish to love yourself completely, so you can live your life fully. It means you’re determined to heal your heart, expand your mind and cultivate the gifts you know you’re meant to share. May we all be works in progress forever, and celebrate the fact that we are!
9) Nobody else can do it for you.
Keep doing what you know in your heart is right for you. Let your dreams be bigger than your fears and your actions louder than your words. Live by choice, not by chance. Make changes, not excuses. Be motivated, not manipulated. Work to excel, not compete. Choose to listen to your inner voice, not the jumbled opinions of everyone else. It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.
10) Life is not easy, but it’s worth it.
If you expect it to be, you will perpetually disappoint yourself. Achieving anything worthwhile in life takes effort. So start every morning ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before. Above all, make sure you properly align your efforts with your goals. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it in the end.
Guide to Careers in International Affairs.
The be-all end-all guide to the best job posting databases for jobs in international affairs.
Thanks to fellow PCV Marcia for this great resource!
Photoset reblogged from The Next Best Thing to a Time Machine with 6 notes
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passions may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
I have never been so affected by a film. One of the most incredible movies I’ve ever seen.
Source: jack-rabbit-slims
Click to zoom in.
A great compliment to this tool is this article: I Learned to Speak Four Languages in a Few Years.
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A Portrait In Time
I’m writing this on here because… well… this doesn’t have anything to do with this particular blog, but I can’t seem to find anywhere else in my life where it fits.
I am overwhelmed with so many things: incredible, joyous, challenging, frightening, frustrating, and a rainbow of emotions that capture me all at once, all the time. I feel like an utter mess in every sense of the form.
Physically- There’s a pile of dishes that need washing and a pile of laundry that needs doing. Floors need to be swept and mopped, doors need to be duct taped down so the bugs don’t get in, fridge needs to be cleaned, shelves need to be re-arranged and given a once-over with a good sponge. I’m out of honey, flour, and eggs, which seem to be key things in my usual diet, but I have no money- that would require going to the bank. Projects I’ve been meaning to finish for months lay around like loose ends- leggings that need to be mended, necklaces that need to be polished, artwork on three of my walls that I haven’t finished and have no plan to do in the immediate future.
Mentally- I’m all over the place. My thoughts jump around to what will I possibly to after the Peace Corps, to what my life will be like in 10 years, to sudden urgent reminders of things I need to do tomorrow. I have two projects with organizations outside of the Peace Corps I’m working on, as well as a heavy project in the Peace Corps right now that I keep pushing off to the next day since it requires so much mental effort and clarity. Rulers and markers and papers are strewn all about; piles of work lay untouched on my book shelf. I haven’t cracked open a GMAT book in weeks. My sleep patterns are completely erratic: in the last two days I’ve gotten 10 hours of sleep out of the recommend 16, yet I know I won’t be able to fall asleep until 2 AM tonight, only to wake up at 10 AM tomorrow and feel guilty for letting my community down by not being Paraguayan, since everyone else gets up at 6 AM. My desktop on my computer is so full of screenshots, papers, or documents that it covers the entire screen.
I do little projects around the house to give myself the illusion that this mountain is becoming less. I carry dishes outside to my sink, or put away two pairs of pants lying on the floor. I suddenly remember that I haven’t updated my blog in two weeks and spend an hour writing whatever’s on the top of my mind, only to not post it. I call my sister who I haven’t spoken to in a month and have an hour long conversation with her. I realize I haven’t eaten anything since lunch, it’s 9 PM, and that any nutritious food would take me 1+ hour to make- so I resort to cooking a cheese grits package my Mom sent me for my birthday, and eat it for dinner at 10 PM. I paint chalkboard paint on my spice jars. Procrastinating by actually doing things I would do if I had the time, which I don’t.
I’m driven by so much passion, excitement, curiosity, desire to DO everything, yet have it all neatly done. I’m wildly exhausted by a combination of happiness and frustration, with small doses of joy and despair. My life feels like it’s spinning out of control in the right way, the wrong way. I strategize ways to make the mountain of things-to-be-done disappear- but what if I do accomplish all of these things?
Well, then I’ll be downright bored.
The day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.
How To Join the Peace Corps →
This article has so many great points about joining the Peace Corps and becoming a Volunteer, all that I agree with.
13 Simple Steps To Get You Through A Rough Day.
Hilarious. My new automatic go-to when I’m feeling down.
This is hilarious and completely true.
Translated:
First column: How I see it
Second column: How another person sees it
Third column: How people outside see it
Fourth column: How the driver sees it
Driver: How wonderful, there’s still so much space available!
I get so excited and wired about some ideas, that I sometimes have trouble sleeping at night. One thing that’s getting me really excited right now are the possibilities of helping develop social entrepreneurship in Paraguay. I’d love to partner with organizations through the Peace Corps to help them achieve their objectives in social entrepreneurship and youth ventures, while stream-lining it into our sector, Community Economic Development.
Here’s a couple of things I’ve been looking at for inspiration and ideas to bring social entrepreneurship/start-ups to Paraguay:
Ashoka Fellows. Currently there are 11 Ashoka Fellows selected from Paraguay (to find them, just filter the list to ‘Paraguay’). There’s a few Economic Development Fellows, and I’d love to meet them and learn more about what their initiatives in Paraguay. There are also Fellows in sectors such as Education and Health, which could be great resources to other Volunteer projects.
Ashoka Youth Ventures. I’d really like to bring this to Paraguay and help expand on this within our communities. This would go hand in hand with some of the initiatives we’re exploring in our sector right now, through our organization Jóvenes Empresarios del Paraguay.
Start-Up Chile. There’s a Start-Up Argentina, a Start-Up Chile- why not a Start-Up Paraguay? A friend of mine had some ideas of creating a think-tank for our sector, where we work with young start-ups. Creating a sort of atmosphere such as this would be really cool!
Youth Venture in Berlin. This is a really interesting article on social entrepreneurship projects young Germans are doing to improve their communities. I think this could definitely be replicable in Paraguay!
Ashoka’s South America Offices. Anyone have some contacts in Paraguay? Let’s get this rolling!
Link reblogged from Musings with 2 notes
Musings: thoughts on fiction →
i love reading fiction. to me, these books are a huge source of learning, and a pet peeve is when pseudo-intellectuals dismiss them. i’ve learned about life and dreamed my biggest dreams more because of novels than any history book, political analysis, or biography. fiction ignites hope and inspiration because it deals with that most enigmatic of truths: possibility. in those few hundred pages, an alternate reality is created that you realize you can make your own.
stories, however fantastical, open up the world to you. i used to devour books as a child. growing up in small, sleepy bahrain, they were a window to different lives, different existences. if there is anything i would want my children to do, it is to read. read, read, read, whatever you can get your hands on - the back of a cereal box, an archie comic, even the trashiest of romance novels. because they show you other ways of thinking, living and believing - other paths that you can pick from to finally chart your own.
i have learned about friendship, honour, courage and integrity from harry potter; the joy of youthful charm, passion and zest for life from anne of green gables; destiny, spirituality and bohemia from shantaram; all-consuming love and self-destruction from the museum of innocence and moth smoke; and female strength, individuality and fierceness from such polar opposite works as half of a yellow sun, little women, and the millennium trilogy. these are some of my favourite books, and what have become building blocks to my character, defining my philosophies, interests and goals.
i remember first reading house of sand and fog many years ago; it was the first time i cried while reading a book. the same happened later with a fine balance and the kite runner. these works truly showed me how unjust, unfair and devastating life can be. novels sensitize you to human suffering in a way that news stories and charity commercials with broad concepts and numbers cannot. emotional investment in a character and his/her life is built in those many pages. i have sometimes felt an overwhelming sadness wash over me while reading a book. i remember going in to a shell for a few days after finishing shantaram.
works of fiction have and continue to shape my personality, views and ideas. they are not an escape, but a means to discover your own reality.
Source: ruawani
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