Please enjoy...
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-relief/art-20044456
And then go find somthing that makes you laugh...
Here is one to start you off...
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Day five - Laughter is the best medicine!
I am taking my cues from the Universe. I sat down to find my uplifting/inspiring topic and the first thing I hear is my son and his friend in the other room laughing. I know it is a grand cliche, but truly laughter the best medicine. Here is a great article with many of the reasons why....
Please enjoy...
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-relief/art-20044456
And then go find somthing that makes you laugh...
Here is one to start you off...
Please enjoy...
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress-relief/art-20044456
And then go find somthing that makes you laugh...
Here is one to start you off...
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Day four - Unexpected Kindness
This morning I had a nice experience of my own that I would like to share. My son and I have the idea that we will start biking to work and to school, so I took our bikes in for a check up. I was expecting a fairly large bill for this and I also thought I would have to leave the bikes. On both counts I was wrong. Kudos to Montlake Bike Shop! I had a person working on each bike, they both needed minor adjustments and I was out of there in about 30 minutes and for less than I though one of the bikes would have cost me.
But that is not even the good part. When I was taking the bikes back to my car a man started chatting with me about the bikes. He then asked if I had a son and how old he was. I told him 12 and he asked me to wait as he wanted to give me some baseball cards to give to him. He then proceeded to give me handful of baseball cards to give to my son. He said he hoped it might inspire him to start collecting. I don't know that will happen, but I thought it was a very kind thing to do.
I appreciate each kindness that is shared. I think they have a ripple effect that is positive and uplifting.
But that is not even the good part. When I was taking the bikes back to my car a man started chatting with me about the bikes. He then asked if I had a son and how old he was. I told him 12 and he asked me to wait as he wanted to give me some baseball cards to give to him. He then proceeded to give me handful of baseball cards to give to my son. He said he hoped it might inspire him to start collecting. I don't know that will happen, but I thought it was a very kind thing to do.
I appreciate each kindness that is shared. I think they have a ripple effect that is positive and uplifting.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Day three - YAY The Bouvier's red colobus monkey is photographed!
Today I had to look harder for an encouraging article than the last two days, when the articles seemed to just drop in my lap. Today I am happy to say that some scientists have found a rare monkey that some thought was extinct. These monkeys were spotted and photographed!
YAY!
I remember in middle school doing a report on the Whooping Crane which was on the verge of extinction. It is still on the endangered species list, but their numbers are larger now than they were in the 70s when I did my report, I believe there were about 60 birds at that time. It was reported in 2011 that there are an estimated 437 birds in the wild and more than 165 in captivity.
In any case here is the article which says we have another species which is on the verge of extinction, but happily they are still with us, so there is still hope. The monkey's which were photographed are living in a newly protected area, so perhaps they too will increase in population in the coming years!
http://www.businessinsider.com/rare-monkey-rediscovered-in-congo-2015-4
And here is to discovering more wonderful happenings in our world!
YAY!
I remember in middle school doing a report on the Whooping Crane which was on the verge of extinction. It is still on the endangered species list, but their numbers are larger now than they were in the 70s when I did my report, I believe there were about 60 birds at that time. It was reported in 2011 that there are an estimated 437 birds in the wild and more than 165 in captivity.
In any case here is the article which says we have another species which is on the verge of extinction, but happily they are still with us, so there is still hope. The monkey's which were photographed are living in a newly protected area, so perhaps they too will increase in population in the coming years!
http://www.businessinsider.com/rare-monkey-rediscovered-in-congo-2015-4
And here is to discovering more wonderful happenings in our world!
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Day 2 - A cool and inspiring article
Happy Thursday!
I was pleased to see my former charge in the news.
I have to admit my french is not as good as it used to be, but the gist of the article is that the little girl I watch as an au pair many years ago (when she was just four). Is now an adult with her own family and giving back to the world in a very positive way by welcoming a refuge in to help him assimilate into Swiss society.
LOL... after attempting to read it in French, I found the translation button.. :)
I love that this wonderful and positive news is out there and it is even cooler that today's sighting involves friends of mine. Way to go Anick and Alain!
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Day 1 - A cool and inspiring article
I think that it is important to find people that do good in the world.
I wonder if I can find something good each day for a month?
What inspired this question today was reading this amazing article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/business/owner-of-gravity-payments-a-credit-card-processor-is-setting-a-new-minimum-wage-70000-a-year.html?_r=2
I am including the article below in case it is removed from the NY times link above...
This is beyond inspiring to me. Gives me faith in humankind and encourages me to be the best me I can possibly be -
I hope it does the same for you!
From the NY times:
The idea began percolating, said Dan Price, the founder of Gravity Payments, after he read an article on happiness. It showed that, for people who earn less than about $70,000, extra money makes a big difference in their lives.
His idea bubbled into reality on Monday afternoon, when Mr. Price surprised his 120-person staff by announcing that he planned over the next three years to raise the salary of even the lowest-paid clerk, customer service representative and salesman to a minimum of $70,000.
“Is anyone else freaking out right now?” Mr. Price asked after the clapping and whooping died down into a few moments of stunned silence. “I’m kind of freaking out.”
If it’s a publicity stunt, it’s a costly one. Mr. Price, who started the Seattle-based credit-card payment processing firm in 2004 at the age of 19, said he would pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company’s anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year.
The paychecks of about 70 employees will grow, with 30 ultimately doubling their salaries, according to Ryan Pirkle, a company spokesman. The average salary at Gravity is $48,000 a year.
Mr. Price’s small, privately owned company is by no means a bellwether, but his unusual proposal does speak to an economic issue that has captured national attention: The disparity between the soaring pay of chief executives and that of their employees.
The United States has one of the world’s largest pay gaps, with chief executives earning nearly 300 times what the average worker makes, according to some economists’ estimates. That is much higher than the 20-to-1 ratio recommended by Gilded Age magnates like J. Pierpont Morgan and the 20th century management visionary Peter Drucker.
“The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” said Mr. Price, who said his main extravagances were snowboarding and picking up the bar bill. He drives a 12-year-old Audi, which he received in a barter for service from the local dealer.
“As much as I’m a capitalist, there is nothing in the market that is making me do it,” he said, referring to paying wages that make it possible for his employees to go after the American dream, buy a house and pay for their children’s education.
Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement.
Mr. Price started the company, which processed $6.5 billion in transactions for more than 12,000 businesses last year, in his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University with seed money from his older brother. The idea struck him a few years earlier when he was playing in a rock band at a local coffee shop. The owner started having trouble with the company that was processing credit card payments and felt ground down by the large fees charged.
When Mr. Price looked into it for her, he realized he could do it more cheaply and efficiently with better customer service.
The entrepreneurial spirit was omnipresent where he grew up in rural southwestern Idaho, where his family lived 30 miles from the closest grocery store and he was home-schooled until the age of 12. When one of Mr. Price’s four brothers started a make-your-own baseball card business, 9-year-old Dan went on a local radio station to make a pitch: “Hi. I’m Dan Price. I’d like to tell you about my brother’s business, Personality Plus.”
His father, Ron Price, is a consultant and motivational speaker who has written his own book on business leadership.
Dan Price came close to closing up shop himself in 2008 when the recession sent two of his biggest clients into bankruptcy, eliminating 20 percent of his revenue in the space of two weeks. He said the firm managed to struggle through without layoffs or raising prices. His staff, most of them young, stuck with him.
Mr. Price said he wasn’t seeking to score political points with his plan. From his friends, he heard stories of how tough it was to make ends meet even on salaries that were still well-above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.
“They were walking me through the math of making 40 grand a year,” he said, then describing a surprise rent increase or nagging credit card debt.
“I hear that every single week,” he added. “That just eats at me inside.”
Mr. Price said he wanted to do something to address the issue of inequality, although his proposal “made me really nervous” because he wanted to do it without raising prices for his customers or cutting back on service.
Of all the social issues that he felt he was in a position to do something about as a business leader, “that one seemed like a more worthy issue to go after.”
He said he planned to keep his own salary low until the company earned back the profit it had before the new wage scale went into effect.
Hayley Vogt, a 24-year-old communications coordinator at Gravity who earns $45,000, said, “I’m completely blown away right now.” She said she has worried about covering rent increases and a recent emergency room bill.
“Everyone is talking about this $15 minimum wage in Seattle and it’s nice to work someplace where someone is actually doing something about it and not just talking about it,” she said.
The happiness research behind Mr. Price’s announcement on Monday came from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist. They found that what they called emotional well-being — defined as “the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant” — rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year.
Of course, money above that level brings pleasures — there’s no denying the delights of a Caribbean cruise or a pair of diamond earrings — but no further gains on the emotional well-being scale.
As Mr. Kahneman has explained it, income above the threshold doesn’t buy happiness, but a lack of money can deprive you of it.
Phillip Akhavan, 29, earns $43,000 working on the company’s merchant relations team. “My jaw just dropped,” he said. “This is going to make a difference to everyone around me.”
At that moment, no Princeton researchers were needed to figure out he was feeling very happy.
I wonder if I can find something good each day for a month?
What inspired this question today was reading this amazing article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/business/owner-of-gravity-payments-a-credit-card-processor-is-setting-a-new-minimum-wage-70000-a-year.html?_r=2
I am including the article below in case it is removed from the NY times link above...
This is beyond inspiring to me. Gives me faith in humankind and encourages me to be the best me I can possibly be -
I hope it does the same for you!
From the NY times:
The idea began percolating, said Dan Price, the founder of Gravity Payments, after he read an article on happiness. It showed that, for people who earn less than about $70,000, extra money makes a big difference in their lives.
His idea bubbled into reality on Monday afternoon, when Mr. Price surprised his 120-person staff by announcing that he planned over the next three years to raise the salary of even the lowest-paid clerk, customer service representative and salesman to a minimum of $70,000.
“Is anyone else freaking out right now?” Mr. Price asked after the clapping and whooping died down into a few moments of stunned silence. “I’m kind of freaking out.”
If it’s a publicity stunt, it’s a costly one. Mr. Price, who started the Seattle-based credit-card payment processing firm in 2004 at the age of 19, said he would pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company’s anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year.
The paychecks of about 70 employees will grow, with 30 ultimately doubling their salaries, according to Ryan Pirkle, a company spokesman. The average salary at Gravity is $48,000 a year.
Mr. Price’s small, privately owned company is by no means a bellwether, but his unusual proposal does speak to an economic issue that has captured national attention: The disparity between the soaring pay of chief executives and that of their employees.
The United States has one of the world’s largest pay gaps, with chief executives earning nearly 300 times what the average worker makes, according to some economists’ estimates. That is much higher than the 20-to-1 ratio recommended by Gilded Age magnates like J. Pierpont Morgan and the 20th century management visionary Peter Drucker.
“The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” said Mr. Price, who said his main extravagances were snowboarding and picking up the bar bill. He drives a 12-year-old Audi, which he received in a barter for service from the local dealer.
“As much as I’m a capitalist, there is nothing in the market that is making me do it,” he said, referring to paying wages that make it possible for his employees to go after the American dream, buy a house and pay for their children’s education.
Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement.
Mr. Price started the company, which processed $6.5 billion in transactions for more than 12,000 businesses last year, in his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University with seed money from his older brother. The idea struck him a few years earlier when he was playing in a rock band at a local coffee shop. The owner started having trouble with the company that was processing credit card payments and felt ground down by the large fees charged.
When Mr. Price looked into it for her, he realized he could do it more cheaply and efficiently with better customer service.
The entrepreneurial spirit was omnipresent where he grew up in rural southwestern Idaho, where his family lived 30 miles from the closest grocery store and he was home-schooled until the age of 12. When one of Mr. Price’s four brothers started a make-your-own baseball card business, 9-year-old Dan went on a local radio station to make a pitch: “Hi. I’m Dan Price. I’d like to tell you about my brother’s business, Personality Plus.”
His father, Ron Price, is a consultant and motivational speaker who has written his own book on business leadership.
Dan Price came close to closing up shop himself in 2008 when the recession sent two of his biggest clients into bankruptcy, eliminating 20 percent of his revenue in the space of two weeks. He said the firm managed to struggle through without layoffs or raising prices. His staff, most of them young, stuck with him.
Mr. Price said he wasn’t seeking to score political points with his plan. From his friends, he heard stories of how tough it was to make ends meet even on salaries that were still well-above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.
“They were walking me through the math of making 40 grand a year,” he said, then describing a surprise rent increase or nagging credit card debt.
“I hear that every single week,” he added. “That just eats at me inside.”
Mr. Price said he wanted to do something to address the issue of inequality, although his proposal “made me really nervous” because he wanted to do it without raising prices for his customers or cutting back on service.
Of all the social issues that he felt he was in a position to do something about as a business leader, “that one seemed like a more worthy issue to go after.”
He said he planned to keep his own salary low until the company earned back the profit it had before the new wage scale went into effect.
Hayley Vogt, a 24-year-old communications coordinator at Gravity who earns $45,000, said, “I’m completely blown away right now.” She said she has worried about covering rent increases and a recent emergency room bill.
“Everyone is talking about this $15 minimum wage in Seattle and it’s nice to work someplace where someone is actually doing something about it and not just talking about it,” she said.
The happiness research behind Mr. Price’s announcement on Monday came from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist. They found that what they called emotional well-being — defined as “the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant” — rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year.
Of course, money above that level brings pleasures — there’s no denying the delights of a Caribbean cruise or a pair of diamond earrings — but no further gains on the emotional well-being scale.
As Mr. Kahneman has explained it, income above the threshold doesn’t buy happiness, but a lack of money can deprive you of it.
Phillip Akhavan, 29, earns $43,000 working on the company’s merchant relations team. “My jaw just dropped,” he said. “This is going to make a difference to everyone around me.”
At that moment, no Princeton researchers were needed to figure out he was feeling very happy.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Deciding to be Decisive
There are many things percolating at the moment in my world. I have realized this is a good thing. After a long lapse posting to this blog, I happened to go back to read some of my former posts. I realized that not only do I enjoy writing my random ideas, they are also fun and helpful for me to re-read in the future. So this post is dedicated to all who may stumble upon my words and to my future self when I look back at insights that are helpful now and maybe helpful again in the future.
My takeaways from re-reading are:
I had always told myself I am indecisive and up to now I had frequently been indecisive. While reflection on this, I recalled a similar issue I used to have with remembering people's names, I used to think I was bad remembering people's names. And I was! One day I realized I wanted to be good at remembering people's names. I made a shift in my perception and decided to be good at remembering names. Guess what, now I am good with people's names.
So from today forward, I am decisive! I am giving myself permission to consider an issue, take in all the information I need to make a thoughtful and education decision. Choose, accept, take action and move on. I understand that some choices may merit more consideration time. I am basically shifting my perception of myself to being decisive, just like I did with remembering names. This is empowering. Making decisions and moving forward will free up energy and focus for new and fresh opportunities that make life more fun, exciting and rewarding.
Here is to the decisive future!
My takeaways from re-reading are:
- Focus on the positive
- Let people you appreciate know they are appreciated regularly
- Note three things you appreciate each day
- Blog... just blog baby... it is worth it :)
I had always told myself I am indecisive and up to now I had frequently been indecisive. While reflection on this, I recalled a similar issue I used to have with remembering people's names, I used to think I was bad remembering people's names. And I was! One day I realized I wanted to be good at remembering people's names. I made a shift in my perception and decided to be good at remembering names. Guess what, now I am good with people's names.
So from today forward, I am decisive! I am giving myself permission to consider an issue, take in all the information I need to make a thoughtful and education decision. Choose, accept, take action and move on. I understand that some choices may merit more consideration time. I am basically shifting my perception of myself to being decisive, just like I did with remembering names. This is empowering. Making decisions and moving forward will free up energy and focus for new and fresh opportunities that make life more fun, exciting and rewarding.
Here is to the decisive future!
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
A win and more...
Tonight the Miller Huskies had their first win! It was sweet in that all of the kids had several shots and more than half of the kids scored!
PS.. This was stored in my drafts and was not published on the night of the win... we have since completed the season. It had its ups and downs... and the kids became better players... and we just had our end of year celebration and I am sad to think I may not see some of those kids till next year... But overall very happy we created this team and that each player and their families were a part of our Miller Huskies 2012 :)
PS.. This was stored in my drafts and was not published on the night of the win... we have since completed the season. It had its ups and downs... and the kids became better players... and we just had our end of year celebration and I am sad to think I may not see some of those kids till next year... But overall very happy we created this team and that each player and their families were a part of our Miller Huskies 2012 :)
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