“Human relationships are the perfect tool for sanding away our rough edges and getting at the core of divinity within us.”
-- Eknath Easwaran
Dr. Brené Brown is a researcher professor at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the questions: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to embrace our imperfections and to recognize that we are enough -- that we are worthy of love, belonging and joy?
365 DAYS. TWO WORDS. ONE MIRACULOUS TRUE STORY.
One recent December, at age 53, John Kralik found his life at a terrible, frightening low. All aspects of his life seemed to be failing: his relationships with his children and partner, his work, his health.
Then, hiking on New Year's Day, John was struck by the thought that his life might become at least tolerable if he could be grateful for what he had. Inspired by a beautiful, simple note he had received thanking him for a Christmas gift, John set himself the goal of writing 365 thank-you notes in the coming year.
One by one, day after day, he handwrote thank yous for gifts or kindnesses he'd received, large and small, from loved ones and coworkers, past business associates and current foes, school friends and doctors and handymen and neighbours, and anyone, really, who'd done him a good turn.
Immediately after he'd sent his very first notes, surprising benefits began to come John's way. Over the year John was writing his notes, his whole life turned around.
365 Thank Yous is a rare memoir, its touching message delivered in the plainspoken storytelling of an ordinary man. Kralik sets a believable, doable example of how to live a good life. To read 365 Thank Yous is to be changed.
365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life
by John Kralik
Format: Hardcover
ISBN : 9781401324056
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2010
Available from Amazon
or, in Australia, from Fishpond.com.au
"If your guard is up, let it down. If you've constructed a defensive wall to protect yourself and keep all the bad guys out, don't forget who that wall also prevents from getting in - the good guys."
Brendon Burchard
"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."
Thomas H. Huxley
"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain.
The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?"
Mary Manin Morrissey
Tim Minchin, the former UWA arts student described as "sublimely talented, witty, smart and unabashedly offensive" in a musical career that has taken the world by storm, is awarded an honorary doctorate by The University of Western Australia.
Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason, not that you have no reason for living.
-- Tom O'Connor
Is there something you've always meant to do, wanted to do, but just ... haven't? Matt Cutts suggests: Try it for 30 days. This short, lighthearted talk offers a neat way to think about setting and achieving goals. Matt Cutts is an engineer at Google, where he fights linkspam and helps webmasters understand how search
works