Got twenty minutes? How about spending it learning something new and, perhaps, life-changing.

TED | Talks | Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight (video)

Dr. Taylor - a brain scientist with a PhD - found herself, one morning, having a stroke. When she realized what was happening to her, she chose to try and study and remember the experience. The results of this decision are an astonishingly detailed picture of what happens to a person when one side (specifically the left side) of the brain stops functioning.

“How many brain scientists have been able to study the brain from the inside out? I’ve gotten as much out of this experience of losing my left mind as I have in my entire academic career.”
Jill Bolte Taylor

This is probably the most inspiring piece of footage I’ve seen all year. It is powerful, funny, moving, and downright staggering in its implications. It was filmed in February (2008), when neuroanatomist, Jill Bolte Taylor spoke at the TED convention in Monterey, California. (BONUS: The site that hosts this video also hosts tons of other TED speakers. Let me warn you though… TED talks are amazing and addictive!)

Here’s a linked photo of the video here. Just click on the picture below to get there.

I think what impressed me most about watching this video, was the transformation that seemed to occur as Dr. Taylor moved through her story. It seemed to me that she moved from her left brain in the opening to her right brain right in front of our eyes. It was breathtaking, and I would love to meet her one day.

If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Taylor and her story, there’s lots to read, hear, and see. Here are a few links I found. (If you come across anything else about her, I’d love to hear about it!)

Her book: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

Click here for the transcript of the above video.

Here is a radio interview with her that was done on April 11, 2008.

And she is scheduled to appear on Oprah on May 6th! (one of the few times I’ve wished I had broadcast television!)

Finally, here is a link to her personal website.

I hope you will be as inspired by her story as I have been. I have, in my own life, been asking for “evidence” that the beliefs I am holding have scientific backing. This talk was an amazingly direct, pointed, and enlightening response to my asking. Thank you!

Happy New Year!!

I love a fresh start.

When I signed on this morning, the quote that met me here was this one:

Dream as if you’ll live forever;
live as if you’ll die today.
James Dean

I really love this. It brings on great questions worth asking.

What would I do with my day if I knew it was my last?

How would I treat people?

What would I say?

What would I do?

What would I dream about if I knew I would never die?

What would I do or dream or Be if I knew both were true?

* ~ * *~ * * ~ * * ~ * * ~ * * ~ * * ~ * * ~ * * ~ * * ~ *

I’ve decided that this is going to be a wonderful year. I’m looking forward to some of the goals I’ve set for myself. They include some (really fun) archiving projects, learning another language, and finishing my novel.

More than that, it is my desire and my intention to lean closer in to the thoughts that feel better to me this year. I’m going to do my best to see the bright side of things and be a positive influence on whomever comes into my experience with the desire to be positively influenced.

I hope your new year is as good as I intend mine to be.

It’s one of my favorite holidays! I so Love that there is a day set aside for the sole purpose of gratitude! What a worthy reason for a holiday!

So!

Here’s an incomplete list of things (iNPO) that I feel pure gratitude about. I’ll be adding to it throughout the day as I take breaks from my NaNoWriMo book.

• I am thankful for my family. (They are truly the best.)
• I am grateful for a really nice place to live.
• I am thankful for very special friends who go above and beyond.
• I am thankful for the best husband anyone could have.
• I am grateful for a creative and fun-loving Mom.
• I am thankful for our new, beautiful floor!
• I am thankful for the teachings of Abraham.
• I am grateful for the opportunity to write.
• I am thankful for pretty weather.
• I am thankful for fun music to listen to.
• I am grateful for good health and well-being.
• I am grateful for the ability to feel better.
• I’m thankful for the opportunity to uplift others.
• I’m thankful for the lovely smells wafting up from the kitchen.
• I’m grateful for some time to write.
• I’m thankful for the opportunity to see my family and friends for the holidays.
• I’m grateful for my healthy, happy kitties.
• I’m thankful for the endless lessons my little one teaches me daily.
• I’m grateful for new friends.
• I’m thankful for a continuing sense of well-being.
• I’m grateful for a bit of slowing.
• I’m grateful for a well-stocked kitchen.
• I’m thankful for the friends I have.
• I’m thankful for a happy, healthy, bubbly, intelligent child.
• I’m grateful for some down time.
• I’m thankful for the beautiful colors taking over my house.
• I’m thankful for good relationships.
• I’m thankful for lots of great reading.
• I’m grateful for the newly found tapes and the wonderful memories they hold.
• I’m thankful for motivation.
• Thank you for a beautiful and thriving world.
• Thank you for a really nice evening dinner with family.
• Thank you for patience and understanding.
• Thank you for humor.
• Thank you for contrast.
• I am grateful for enough to eat.
• I am grateful for a thoughtful husband.
• Thank you for a very good day.
• I am grateful for a place to share.
• I am thankful for those who read what I write.
• I am thankful for inspiration!

Thank you for reading. Have a wonderful day!

I have come upon a powerful exercise that has only brought me joy (and more!) since I started playing with it. It’s called (by some) a Rampage of Appreciation (RoA). You can choose virtually any subject, person, place, thing, or idea, specific or general, and just go to town on it. It’s fun to start with stuff you already naturally appreciate. Later, you can do RoA’s on things that you find harder to appreciate. (That’s where the real magic is!)

Try it yourself and see what happens!

Rampage of Appreciation - Thunderstorms

I love summer storms! In fact, I look forward to them all year long. I love how the clouds build all morning. They’re so pretty and fluffy and white. Then, part of them starts to get darker as they grow, and that adds a new beauty to their surfaces. The light changes on the desert as well, and it’s a great time for photography if I’m in the mood for it. Soon, the sky darkens completely, and I love to feel the energy in the air. The atmosphere nearly crackles with it.

And then there is the smell! I love the smell of an upcoming storm. Certain plants seem to give off more of their pungent aroma when it’s about to rain, and I want to open all the windows and doors to let it all in. As the light dims and the air thickens, I start to get excited about what is to come.

Then I hear my first BOOM! and it sends shivers down my spine. I love to watch the sky for lightning and count the second until the thunder. The air sometimes makes my hair stand up a little, and I love that feeling too. Here comes the wonderful smell of rain!! (Is there a better smell anywhere??) Soon, big, fat, warm drops of water start to plop down onto the ground. If it’s warm enough, and the lightning is still far away, I like to turn on music and go outside. My son and I have been known to dance in the rain and it’s wonderful!

During a real gully-washer (which are my favorites!) it’s time to come inside and watch the storm through the windows. Sometimes the rain will come down so hard that I can’t see the back of my property! The washes fill up and run like little rivers. I love the sound of it, and the sight of all that running water is exciting.

My favorite thing to do when it rains like that is take a little nap. There’s something sleepy about even the most violent summer storms. I can sleep right through the crashes and booms of thunder. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I smile in my sleep during those times. And I always wake up so refreshed.

When the storm is over, I love to go outside and take it all in. The smell is almost overwhelming, and I just drink it in. The sounds of the running water in nearby washes is soothing. Sometimes, if it’s close to the evening or nighttime, a nearby wash fills with the sounds of some sort of frog or toad croaking. There must be thousands of them to make such a cacophony! I could listen to them for hours. Everything is dewy and shiny and clean.

I love a good thunderstorm.

I have found a new path. Well, new to me. Sorta. (lol) In fact, it’s a very old and much talked-about path, and the wonderful synchronicity is that it perfectly melds with what I’ve been doing already with the JIP. In fact, my work with the JIP led me right to it. It’s all very exciting.
:)

My only (current) question is how, or even if, blogging about it fits in. I guess that’ll just have to be something I discover along the way.

I’m going off soon to learn more and meet others who are on the same path. (So exciting!) I just thought I’d leave a quickie update for you six or so folks who like to check this blog periodically.

Just know that regardless of where this blog goes, two things are true:

1. I’m still walking a path toward joy (and so can you)!
2. I will finish writing and posting the Joy Immersion Project.

Have a wonder-filled day!

Love,
Stacy

This super simple, slightly pointless, very relaxing, quietly addictive Flash game is really fun. It’s called Boomshine.

Once loaded, (it’ll take a few minutes for those of you on slower connections like I am) you’ll see a number of little colored circles floating randomly on the screen. You place your cursor somewhere on the screen. When you click, you create a large circle in that spot. Any small circles that touch your large circle, themselves grow large and capable of continuing this chain reaction. Then they shrink and disappear. The object is to affect as many of the circles as possible. So far, I’ve not been able to reach the given goals all the way through to level twelve, but it’s fun trying.

What’s more, there is some relaxing music that accompanies the game if you turn your sound up. I thought it was neat that the programmer came up with a way to add sound effects (when the circles affect one another) that blends in nicely with the pretty music.

You won’t win any awards, add fodder to your resume, or climb any mountains with this one, but if you are feeling stressed or just waiting for another page in your browser to load, this is a nice, gentle (and kind of pretty) way to pass your time.

A big THANK YOU to Karoline who has graciously translated Exercises Four and Five of the Joy Immersion Project into German! If German is your first language, the exercises are now posted and ready to read! (You can access all the German translated assignments: here.)

Aufgabe #4

Aufgabe #5

Thanks again, Karoline. You rock!

As I was lying in bed recovering from surgery a couple of days ago, I noticed that I was feeling more miserable than I had been before. My back hurt from being in bed so long. I was bored. I was judging myself for my lack of activity. I was lethargic and had no energy.

It occurred to me that what I aught to do is get out of bed for just a little while and do something - anything - else but lie there. But what I really wanted to do was wait until I felt more energetic and motivated. I didn’t feel like getting up!

My inner response to that was surprising to me. It was pure resistance. I knew (in that funny way we just know) that it would help me to get up and out of that bed, but I didn’t want to do it. For a few minutes, I just lay there wrestling with my inclination to do nothing and my desire to feel better.

It didn’t take too long for me to reach an agreement with myself and decide to get up and walk around just a little bit. I’ve gotten accustomed to feeling good, and my tolerance for feeling otherwise is not what it used to be. Sure enough, an hour or two up and out of that bed matched with the simple action of sitting on the porch with an iced tea and a novel did the trick. Even though I became very tired and was forced to go back to bed after only a couple of hours, I felt noticeably better. What’s more, the next day, I more than tripled my time up and around, and the fatigue and achy feelings were much improved too.

As it happened, the most uncomfortable part of this entire process was the lying in bed feeling my resistance to getting up, and dreading how that expenditure of seemingly non-existent energy would feel. Once I made the decision, the actual getting up was virtually painless. (It does not take much energy to get up and pour a glass of tea, after all!) In return for my tiny output of energy in the direction of something I knew would be good for me, I felt a little better. The next day, I had a bit of that energy I’d been craving the day before. I also had a little momentum. So getting out of bed was just that much easier.

Many (if not all) of us have a little voice in our head that tells us that we cannot, or that tells us that it won’t work, or that tells us any number of other things that contrasts with what we know will make us happier. I guess the point of this writing is to say that this voice is truly worth ignoring.

It’s difficult for me to tell what sort of readership I have going on here, but for those of you who visit and are not part of my immediate family or close circle of friends, I would imagine that this site has seemed inexplicably dead recently. For the first time in over a year, I have not even updated my FitDay stats.

So I’m writing this post to assure you that I have not quit. Not by a long shot.

In March, my husband and I learned (very happily) that we were expecting. It was at that time that I stopped filling in my FitDay stats due to the increasing nausea of morning sickness. I was nibbling here and there, when (and what) I could tolerate, and keeping track of that was more trouble than it was worth. Besides, I did not intend to lose weight during this time. I was also very tired, and I fell behind in many aspects of my life. Upkeep of this blog was one of the things that suffered. We decided not to share our news publicly right away because the first trimester is the riskiest. We even held off on telling most of our family members until we were more sure of our good news.

At the eight-week mark of pregnancy, just week and a half ago, I showed complications that would prove to be the end of the pregnancy. It was a sad and frightening time. The pregnancy had been very much wanted, and the complications arising from its termination led to a hospital stay and surgery. Since that time, I have been in bed recovering from that operation.

Of the past ten days, I have spent approximately eight hours feeling badly for myself about this. The disappointment, pain, and confusion surrounding these events all hit me about four days ago when the boredom of bed rest was at its peak. However, good talks with wonderful people, prayers, and some real soul searching led me to the peaceful place I am in now.

I remembered that I had a choice. I could focus my attention and energy upon the pain and the loss - what I didn’t want - or I could focus my attention on what I have and what I do want. I chose the latter, and it has made all the difference.

I have a wonderful life. When we learned that I was pregnant, family members and friends were happy and supportive. When we lost the pregnancy, people came from all corners to offer their support. My mom dropped everything and was there for us through the whole thing. My dad called everyday to check on me. My husband never left my side. (His employer, in turn, gave him time off from work, no questions asked.) My not-yet-five-year-old son came up with phrases (on his own, mind you) like, “Mommy, I’m sorry you don’t feel good. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” and repeated them to me daily. Friends brought love and gifts to our home. Everyone - even those for whom it was uncomfortable - sent positive thoughts. My body began to heal so quickly that I was released from the hospital after only twenty-four hours post-surgery.

Once home, I have had a doting husband willing to do anything to make me more comfortable. I have had a comfortable bed to recover in. I’ve had books to read, movies to watch, games to play, lots of pillows, and kitties to cuddle with. I’ve had an internet connection so I could find things that inspire and amuse me. I have had encouraging emails, phone calls, and visits from friends. And everyday, I’ve seen a new sign that I’m recovering. By the end of next week, if not sooner, I know I will be at 100%.

I have a wonderful life. I have so much to be thankful for and I am dedicating this time to that gratitude. Nothing could be more healing than that. I also believe that a healthy baby waits in our future. And, if I’m mistaken about that, my dear husband and precious son is plenty. I am more than satisfied.

So, if you’re inclined to feel sad for our loss, please don’t spend too much time there. It happened for a reason, whether we are privy to that reason or not. And I have it good. In fact, I’m probably the luckiest person you know. Even if it has nothing whatever to do with luck.
:)

As I improve over this next week, I’ll blow the dust off the top of the blog and see about resuming my work here. I miss it, and there is still more to do.

Until then, have a great day.

Recently, I came across a book that began changing my life as soon as I started reading it. It’s amazing, and I hope that I can convince you to go out and pick up a copy yourself.

It’s called “Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting - the astonishing power of feelings” by Lynn Grabhorn. You can get a copy from Amazon, your local bookstore, or even your library. (That’s where I picked it up.) There is also an audio version, though it is abridged.

I’ve got (lots) more to say about this. This book is having a profound (and positive) affect on how I am managing my life right now. I’ll save all that for another post. For now, please, go out and get this book. It’s wonderful.