Tag Archives: philosophy

Bright-Side of the Web: Before I Die…

“It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and forget about what really matters to you.” Candy Chang.

Join Ms. Chang as she describes her experiences turning neglected spaces into constructive ones.  With this particular experiment, Candy says, “Thinking about death clarifies your life.”

As we bring November to a close and step into the time of year where people start planning their resolutions, think about Candy’s message.

How would you answer the question:
Before I die I want to…

30-Day Challenge: Day 30! Yipee!!

Well, how did you do? Did you make it all the way without stumbling?
If you stumbled, did you shake it off and keep going, knowing it was but a mere bump and nothing to make you give up?

I’m proud to say that I stayed away from bread for the entire month.  Not once did I have sandwich bread, bagels, croissants, waffles, english muffins, muffins of any kind or pizza. 

How did I find a month without bread? Ok, not bad, sort of hard, sort of easy.
I never once craved it but it made it more difficult to think of what to eat.  My go-to toast and jam or egg and cheese on an english muffin made me have to reach for something else or modify my standard fare – just eggs with no toast for instance.  

I did, I admit, eat more pasta than I usually do which perhaps was the reason I didn’t crave bread.  I also ate a few crackers.  They weren’t on my list so I felt they were ‘safe’ but I did limit them to much less than I would have had normally.
I had hoped that this challenge would kick-start some weight loss for me but not even a pound was shed (likely thanks to the pasta).
 

What’s for dinner tomorrow? Likely pizza. I did miss pizza.

Share your experience with your 30-Day Challenge.
Are you planning a 30-Day Challenge for December? What will you do?
And don’t forget to answer ‘Before I die, I want to…’ 

Video credit: http://www.ted.com/talks/candy_chang_before_i_die_i_want_to.html

A Symbolic Life

Symbols surround us every day. We use them and show them without much thought.

What do the symbols you present say about you? 

Perhaps in this age of texts and tweets and emoticons, symbols are used more than ever before.

We add ‘xo’ and ‘<3’ to the ends of notes to loved ones.

🙂 and 😦 display our emotions which help the reader understand the many non-verbal conversations we have with one another, hoping to ensure that our meaning is not lost in translation.

Are symbols fairly new to us and based on electronic communications?  Many are but in the case of x’s and o’s, these have represented kisses and hugs for generations.

Let’s consider the other symbols that surround us:

Math provides us with a myriad of symbols, both positive or negative. Either adding or multiplying to our experience or negatively deducting from our source.

But what other symbols surround us in our daily existence?

As we age, we develop wrinkles and laugh lines.  Someone meeting us for the first time sees these symbols of experience and make deductions. They start to assess our age and place themselves in relation to us. Are we older, younger, by how much?

One of my favourite lines from the song Happy Baby by Shaye is: “These lines upon my face, I’d be a fool to erase ’cause they show my place in this world.” Yet so many of us, women in particular, are obsessed with hiding our age.  Who are we really trying to deceive?

What about visible scars? Do they symbolize a difficult life?  A serious accident? A birth defect?

Our clothes? Symbols of societal stature?

Cars: Symbols of financial class or moral standing?

Houses: what does the size of our homes symbolize to passersby?

Choice of vacation spots: financial, educational, or a symbol of our stage in life?

The books we read. The movies we watch. Do we play video games or not?

Our lives are full of symbols; symbols that others use to define us and that we use to define ourselves.

As our friend Forrest Gump stated in the video on my post “Life is like a box of chocolates…”, “there’s an awful lot you can tell about a person by their shoes; where they’re going; where they’ve been.” These are images of ourselves that we portray, for the most part, without even realizing it. But you can’t know the whole story until you the know the whole person.

Have you ever thought of the symbols you present to the world? Are they representing the real you?

Enjoy Happy Baby by Shaye – great song, great message, great Canadian group.

Photo credit: http://photopin.com
flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/5078981384/
Video credit: YouTube

Quotes That Make You Go Hmmm…


“There are moments on the brink,
when you can give yourself to a lover, or not;
give in to self-doubt, uncertainty, and admonishment, or not;
dive into a different culture, or not;
set sail for the unknown, or not;
walk out onto a stage, or not….
Resist then, and…
                                 there is only what might have been.”

Diane Ackerman

photo credit: http://photopin.com
flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/3155662908/

“Life is like a box of chocolates.

You never know what you’re gonna get.” Forrest Gump

Life is full of surprises and twists and turns.  Some wonderful, some not.

You may start off in one direction and end up somewhere quite unexpected.

You may meet someone who changes your trajectory. They may present options to you that you hadn’t considered and venture down an unexplored path. Perhaps a promotion offers a career direction that leads you to further challenges.

Some of these twists and turns may end up being the things you look back on and categorize as ‘mistakes’.  Did you learn anything from your so-called ‘mistake’? If so, then perhaps it should be considered a lesson.  Is it a mistake only if you repeat it?

Reaching into your box of life-chocolate, you pull out your favourite one. Do you gobble it up and reach in again for another or do you savour it slowly trying to make it last?

Do you enjoy being surprised by the selections or are you more the type that prefers to check the map and select your chocolate carefully, considering all the options and leaving the unpleasant ones for last, or for someone else?

Some would say that isn’t living; that life should be experienced as it unfolds.

Some would say that is living with intention; you have a plan, desires, and you intend to see that you reach your goals.

Is one method more right than the other? Is one method more right for you?

You may never know what life will throw your way, but if you make a map, there are less surprises; for better or worse, the choice is yours to make.

Are you a read-the-map person or a take-what-you-get sort?

Clip from Forrest Gump

Photo credit: http://photopin.com
flickr.com/photos/washingtonydc/4357019483/
Video credit: YouTube

Positive Ponderings: Judgement

Is it only books
that you judge
by their covers?

photo credit: http://photopin.com
flickr.com/photos/osiatynska/3287986172/

Positive Ponderings: Lifestyle Coordinator

If I had the power to change your title to

 

Lifestyle Coordinator,

 

what would you do to help your next client:

You?

photo credit: http://photopin.com
flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2942950081/

Positive Ponderings: Six Word Positive Memoir

Have you heard of the ‘six word memoir‘?

The idea is to describe your life using only six words.

I would like to put a twist on that.  A Pollyanna twist.

Using six words, write about something positive in your life.

Here’s mine:

Love, laughter, family, friends; lucky girl.

What’s yours?

photo credit: http://photopin.com
flickr.com/photos/lwr/101653179/

30-Day Challenge: Day 5

How is your 30-Day Challenge going? Did you make it through the weekend? Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t.  Stick with it and ignore the slip-up. You can add a day to the end if you like. 

So far, I’ve managed to keep bread at bay and it has not been as difficult as I had feared. I’ve had soup with salad a couple of times and eggs with no toast. The tricky thing for me is just keeping it at the front of my mind and not unconsciously making a sandwich out of habit. 

Well, 4 days down, 26 to go!  

How is your challenge going? (Don’t forget to share your 6-word positive memoir)

Welcome to the Bright-Side! A blog celebrating the good in humanity, inspiring quotes and life observances.

For years I’ve been wrestling Pollyanna – struggling to stay positive in a world of negativity, trying to shield my children and myself from a bombardment of negative news and media images only to feel like it was a loosing battle – one against the masses – but that’s life. What can you do? Well, this…

I, for one, am going to turn negatives into positives, stop wrestling with my inner Pollyanna and let her shine and begin to refocus on the good in life.

As a child, like most I suppose, I was overwhelmingly positive – the quintessential Pollyanna, always looking on the bright side of life.  If I fell and scraped my knee (which I did with remarkable frequency), I thought, “Well, it could have been worse, I could have scraped my nose too.”

But as I matured and the many things I hoped would happen, didn’t; the many things I imagined would happen, didn’t; the many things I expected to happen, didn’t; my Pollyanna braids unfurled and disappointment transformed them into a tight pony-tail of conformity or neatly constructed bun a-top my head while a that’s-life-what-did-you-expect attitude took shape.

As much as I have tried to suppress it, a Pollyanna-ness still flickers inside me, the warm embers of which help me to maintain an overall positive attitude, believing that things happen for a reason and there is a lesson to be learned from it all but from the vantage point of age (or what some might argue as ‘wisdom’), I wonder why I’ve accepted that adage.

Sure things happen but the reason might be because of my attitude toward it so just because it happened, do I need to accept it?

  By changing my outlook, perhaps disappointment could turn into gratitude.

So I haven’t travelled to Italy, nor do I have the money to do so in the near future.  It doesn’t mean that I won’t get there at some point.  Instead I should be grateful that I can afford to put a roof over my head and can make spaghetti whenever I want. Italy is something I have to look forward to, and what is life without dreams?

Am I the only one out there yearning for the bright-side in life?

According to one recent listing of the top ten tourist attractions in the world, Disney theme parks took two of the top spots with a third at number eleven.  Are we so discontented with reality that a combined 32,952,000 of us annually spend our hard-earned tax dollars to live a week in a fantasy world rather than in the world we created?

Perhaps it’s time to change our perspective.

Join in my observations as I share my findings — things I see around me to celebrate, the good in humanity, the quirky, things that make me smile or things that I’m pondering in my quest for what’s good out there — and send me some of your own ‘brighter-side of life’ observances for as that originator of all things zen said:

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” Buddha

  Let’s focus on the good in the world. Fasten your pig-tails Buddha, this is going to be fun!

 

*   *   *   *   *   *

Any links associated with blog posts are for your reference only.  I am simply sharing my brighter-side-of-life findings and receive no compensation for such recommendations.

I’m spreading the positive, people. What you put out, you get back. Please keep all comments to a positive tone.  Negative comments will not be posted.  

*   *   *   *   *   *

photo credits: Carolin Grandin
© Carolin Grandin 2012