From the founder of the popular online community Tiny Buddha.com comes a daily inspirational guide of simple and creative challenges to help you actively spread love to those around you.
Tiny Buddha's 365 Days of Tiny Love Challenges is a simple guide to help readers pursue happy, connected lives and bring greater love into the world.
Each week begins with an inspirational message written by members of the TinyBuddha.com online community, followed by seven days of short challenges that focus on self-love, giving and receiving love in relationships and friendships, and spreading love in the world, such as:
* Write a list of three things you appreciate about yourself and place it somewhere in your home where you'll frequently see it throughout the day
* Compliment someone who serves you in some way (for example, a waiter, barista, or bus driver) on how well they do their job
* Keep an eye out for someone who looks sad-a friend, coworker, or even stranger-and say something that might make them laugh or smile.
By using the book each day throughout the year, readers will learn to develop closer bonds in relationships, let go of anger and bitterness, better understand themselves and their loved ones, and turn strangers into friends.
Lori Deschene is the founder of tinybuddha.com, a community of thousands of people interested in sharing wisdom for a happier life. She is a regular speaker at Wisdom2.0 and a freelance writer whose work has appeared in national magazines. This is her first book.
BUY THE BOOK ...Book Depository, Amazon.
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
e.e. cummings
Some people see their lives filled with abundant blessings and find thankfulness easy and natural; others are so pre-occupied with tending to past wounds or current crises that they simply don't feel grateful.
Regardless of where you fit on this spectrum, I hope you will make a commitment to give yourself and others who deserve it the gift of gratitude.
Sincerely thanking others for something they did or for the role they play in your life is not merely good manners and good ethics. I think William James was right when he said, "The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated." Fortunately, it's a need easily met. It costs so little and means so much. Just putting appreciation into words can make someone's day, or even change their life.
But there is another side of gratitude and it should play a much larger part in your life. Expressing gratitude is what you do for others, but experiencing gratitude is what you must do for yourself. Willie Nelson, after struggling with depression and addiction, said, "When I started counting my blessings my whole life turned around."
Feeling gratitude is a potent tonic that can immeasurably improve your happiness and sense of well-being. Author Melodie Beatie tells us why. "Gratitude" she says, "unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more."
The platitudes are true. The key to happiness is deciding to be happy. It's not getting more than you have; it's appreciating what you have.
So, whether things are going well or poorly, ... open up a new emotional bank account and start filling it with all the things that deserve your gratitude. If you do, you will have even more to be grateful for.
Michael Josephson
www.whatwillmatter.com
When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over ... Forgive yourself and move on
Bernie S. Siegel
This is a guest post from Kwesi Millington.
Kwesi is a public speaking, storytelling & confidence coach, teaching you to speak, share, serve and live with greater confidence. Check out his website at www.CommunicateToCreate.com and do watch his periscopes. He shares some very practical tips on speaking and story.
When you speak, are your phrases littered with "um's" and "ah's"? Do filler words fill your speeches?
When I first started speaking, I HATED silence. I used to do anything to fill those silences. And when I didn't know what to say next, I filled them with the non-word no-no's that most people often use in conversation. The “Um's”, “Ah's”, “Likes” and “You knows”. It's not that the audience did not understand my speeches when I used these words, but I appeared nervous, unprepared, and less professional.
I devoted myself to working on my delivery, and once I started to eliminate these filler words, I started to be told that my messages were more powerful, and that I was a pretty good speaker!
The thing is, the messages did not change to cause improvements; I literally TOOK AWAY words to make my speeches better, instead of adding them.
Let's look at 5 strategies you can use starting now to become a, um, better speaker. These are easy to apply steps that will improve your communication and make you appear more confident. It's as easy as one word: PAUSE.
P – Practice
Rehearse Your Speech. I have heard people say they can “wing it” or that they sound staged when they prepare beforehand. If that is you, fine, but from experience, complete practice leads to calm performances. People add fillers to make up for spaces in a speech that they are not prepared for. When you practice your speech, you get to know your material inside and out. This way, if you forget a part, you can pause and let it come back to you (because you have practised), or simply move on because lets face it, YOU are the only one who knows what you forgot anyways. How do you practice? See my article on the 5Ps of Perfect Practice for more.
A – Answer
When you ask your audience a rhetorical question to your audience (ie: Have you ever had a time when...?), take a moment to quickly answer the question in YOUR mind before continuing to speak. This does 2 things: firstly, it allows the audience to absorb your question, showing that you respect them and actually want them to think about it. Secondly, it forces you to pause, in a spot that you may have otherwise used fillers. The pause makes you look more polished and professional, and then you can continue speaking at your next sentence/thought.
U – Use Everyday as Practice
I once read of a question asked of high school students. They were asked to describe a situation in 2 ways: firstly, how they would tell a police officer the situation, and secondly how they would tell their friends. In the first instance, the verbiage was very proper, and in the second it was casual with fillers and broken English. Though I do not always believe in the following statement, I do believe it applies here: The Way You do ANYTHING, is the Way You do EVERYTHING. So from now on, get in the habit of NEVER using filler words, even when talking to your family and friends. Just like an athlete spends more time practising than in the game, most of your conversations are with people you know, and a very small percentage of your life's speaking is on a stage, no matter how much you speak. So watch for filler words like um, ah, and like whenever you speak to ANYONE. Reduce then eliminate them in your daily life, and you will see that transfer to the stage.
S – Stop
When you speak, think of how you write. You add commas, semi-colons and periods in your writing. When you speak, deliberately pause where you would at these punctuation points. Many speakers are so focused on their next thought, they forget to let the last one sink in. Most people are visual learners, which means they form pictures in relation to what you say. Give them time to make those pictures, and to re-live your stories with you, by pausing at your punctuation points.
E – Enjoy Yourself
Finally, enjoy the process of speaking. You've practised, you know your material, and you have a message to share. Once you forget about being perfect and remembering everything that you want to say, you can enjoy your time on stage, SLOW down, and savour the moment. Don't worry about the time or think about getting to your next point. Enjoy the NOW, and just deliver your speech one thought at a time!
At the end of the day, as Speaker Craig Valentine says, don't look for perfection, look for connection!
Giving the power back to the children. Amazing!!
I don't think God cares where we were graduated or what we did for a living. God wants to know who we are. Discovering this is the work of the soul - it is our true life's work.
Bernie Siegel
