Explore. Learn. Share. Repeat.
Obnoxious title to this Revero podcast by Shawn Baker, but it is a good listen for the section about neuroplasticity and healing. How they are talking about managing your thoughts daily to make a new habit of mind is familiar to me. The maxim, “What you think about you become,” is even uttered.
You can be fully engaged in life and spiritually connected to your Higher Self / God / Love on a moment-by-moment basis. You begin to notice that times when you feel spiritually connected and in the flow happen more often. You find yourself feeling whole and loving more often, but there are still those times when you “crash.”
It seems the further along you get in noticing the highs in life, the more crashes can seem more painful for a while. Soon those more painful times shorten in duration, and recovery comes faster, but it still feels like you shouldn’t be able to be knocked on your butt like that after flying high. The pain may be due to the big difference between how your average vibe rises yet the lowest vibe stays low for a while. The difference between highs and lows can be large for a phase or two.
The quickest way back in is to allow, release resistance, and wait for inspiration and enthusiasm to return. Meanwhile, do what you enjoy and live in the moment.
The more difficult it is for teens to find jobs, the more they stop looking for those jobs. For all the societal angst around youth social media use, it could be that many teens don’t have a lot of other options for how to spend their time. Reducing barriers to work could go a long way toward empowering teens to have healthier, more authentic, real-life interactions with the people in their communities.
My teen’s first job
This is an excellent article by Kerry MacDonald, who has been traveling around the country this year learning about microschools and other alternatives to the conventional classroom.
In a World Full of Robots, Humans Wanted | Cato Institute
“So we got progress reports home saying she can only count to 100, but she should be counting to 150 at this point. And her Spanish comprehension is not where we want it to be. And around this time, it’s starting to click with me that maybe these aren’t the important things.”
In a World Full of Robots, Humans Wanted | Cato Institute
As you are walking around town working to get stuff done, did you know that it’s not so much what you say or how you say it but how you vibe that determines how your interactions with others will go? People are tremendously perceptive. Many are experts in body language and decoding a vibe, and they don’t even know it. You can be certain that others sense your vibe well before they can even make a logical argument to explain what they think of you.
Can you do anything about what others think of you? Should you even try? No, don’t even try, not directly anyway. Taking direct action meant to control what others think of you is a waste of life energy. Instead, use the indirect method by working on your own vibration. Create time and space to focus on feeling good. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time…less than 5 minutes, really. And it doesn’t have to be a big production either. In fact, the simpler and less obtrusive, the better!
Now some people might think that I’m talking about meditating every day. Meditation is a great way to bump the vibration up for some people. Personally, I find meditation a better tool for quieting mental chatter to get more in touch with intuition and tune in to your higher self. Reaching for the feeling of love and appreciation and the sweetness of life during meditation is a great way to use daily meditation to lift your vibration, too though.
There are lots of ways to feel your vibrations soar each day. Listening to your favorite music for a few minutes…especially good beat, high flying, enjoy life type songs.
Getting outdoors is another great way to raise your vibe. Whatever you can do outside that helps you notice the beauty of nature and absorb the majesty of life. You can do an activity like fishing, or hiking, or you could just gaze at the mountains, trees, or oceans for a bit.
I also like what I call the Leading Questions Game. Think of questions you can ask yourself to get a happy response. Have fun with it. Remember, this is a game. Ask a question, then give yourself a few seconds to come up with something. So you might say, “Who can I appreciate right now?” or “What has been the happiest moment of my life so far?” or “If I felt like a powerful force for good right now, how would I feel.”
Make it a priority to feel your own vibration soaring for a few minutes each day. Allow the high vibe, make a space for it. Do so, and you will find day-to-day interactions flowing like never before.
There are powerful people around us all the time. People who can either help us create a new and better story or people who will help us rehash our old story. Relationships are about the potential of the next part of your story. Through your relationships, you become more of who you are. Much of the juice of life comes from interactions with others too.
Even as we live our lives and have our experiences, we can maintain a fundamental view of others as people with the potential to connect meaningfully with us. Through times of connection, we all learn something new about ourselves. Different teachers and mentors will come into our lives through our relationships.
It’s human nature to look to others to make us feel good. One of the best feelings ever happens when we look into someone’s eyes as we laugh with them. It’s so easy to appreciate the moment when that happens. But remember, no one else is responsible for how you feel. Would you even want them to be? I don’t care to be that dependent on anyone! I don’t control how others feel, and no one but me controls how I feel.
You are worthy, and your perspective is valid. You have a unique point of view, and it matters. You matter whether anyone else recognizes that at any moment or not. Do not be dependent on other people’s opinions of you for your own happiness!
That being said, strive to make appreciation the whole point of your interaction with others. That appreciation will strengthen you, even though, at first glance, it might feel like something you are doing for someone else.
The first episode of the Wiser than Me podcast by Julia Louis-Dreyfus hooked me. Julia is featuring conversations with old ladies and what we can learn from them. The podcast is very well done. I’m looking forward to hearing more.
I love listening to podcasts as well as audiobooks. Auditory learner here, for sure. I loaded Pocket Casts up yesterday to give it a whirl and fell in love instantly. How easy it was to move my subscriptions over and discover new listens too. What a pleasure! Also, it was a simple thing to manually add my feeds from Substack subscriptions. Even with being a paid subscriber to Spotify, that wasn’t a convenience available on that platform. I love that WordPress bought and is developing Pocket Casts. WordPress has done so much right, in my opinion. If you are just starting out in blogging and want an easy way to run with it on your own, I can’t recommend WordPress.com highly enough either.
Automattic acquired Pocket Casts last July, and since we’ve been tapping away trying to make the best podcast client for people who love listening to podcasts.
Open Source Podcasting Client – Matt Mullenweg
Decades later, we are finally at what I recognize as a tipping point for the transformation of public education. There has been an understanding for decades now that public schools were not keeping up to speed with the real world and that we could do better. Many of us felt a change was imminent back in the 90s, but the wheels of politically charged bureaucracies turn slowly, and the public was generally not concerned enough to take action. Many of us moved on because time was passing us by. Now is different, though. There is change afoot! I’m sure more years in development are required, but the decks are being cleared.
The (Further) Case for the Free Market in Education – Foundation for Economic Education
The (Further) Case for the Free Market in Education – Foundation for Economic Education
While you are at it, review some of Peter Gray’s work.
Here is helpful documentation with many useful links for researching public domain and copyright law. I would like to find a public domain project to breathe new life into this year. I love the idea of the detective work required to find the perfect project.
Public Domain Day 2023 | Duke University School of Law
Public Domain Day 2023 | Duke University School of Law
Like with other creative endeavors, your newsletter creation skills expand when you read newsletters in the first place. But, since so much of the action happens in emails, it’s easy to miss out on examples that could inspire your own newsletter.
24 Awesome Email Newsletter Examples (And What Makes Them Great) – Go WordPress
Looking at setting up my next newsletter and thinking of ideas. The above-referenced post is great for the brainstorming stage. I also recommend Aweber for email newsletters. Not every small business owner can afford to invest in email marketing right away. But they still need to be able to connect with their customers and prospects. That is why AWeber is now available to everyone. Start for free and quickly grow your business ⏤ no time restrictions, no credit card required. Create your free account today via my affiliate link.
The first URL is the one the user clicked, typed in, or otherwise requested. The second is the new destination URL.
The Ultimate Guide to Redirects: URL Redirections Explained
I’m getting ready for a blog redesign and did a little research about redirects today. I wanted to share the link because I think this will be one I return to again and again.
There are several good insights in this month’s edition of the Next newsletter by Jeff Selingo. It’s always a very thoughtful read with good insights into the trends in the higher education system in the United States.
This month he is focusing on the intersection between college education and the workforce during this time when hiring the right people is especially difficult. I can appreciate the idea of the trouble with translating skills gained into application packages for job seekers. I find this is very often what people need help with as they have no idea the treasures their experience contains until we talk.
He and Matt Sigelman of Burning Glass Institute also discuss the idea that curriculum changes can be made in higher ed to bring skills that are in demand to fill the best jobs forward throughout the college career. They are talking about the kind of skills that aren’t easily replaced by technology. Skills like writing, creative thinking, and the ability to collaborate with others.
Working, as he put it, is a side gig right now for many college students. But maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe “working is core and maybe the learning is a side gig,” Sigelman said.
Putting an emphasis on working and the learning that happens while doing so seems to me to be the obvious way to empower individuals, especially during this time of educational upheaval at all levels which has been a long time coming.