33 of Life’s Most Powerful Lessons | Illuminated Mind
1. Often those who aren’t the easiest to love are the ones who need it the most. - this is one i struggle with every day because i believe i have someone in my life that fits this...
2. Seeing children play can make even the bluest day brighter.
3. Money is not the root of all evil, fear is.
4. The secret to happiness is the acceptance of yourself.
5. Happiness is not based on external status, it is an internal state.
6. Money can’t make me happy, but self-sufficiency gives me the freedom to share myself creatively, without worrying about how I’m going to pay the bills.
7. Every man has a right to choose his own destiny.
8. The path is the way.
9. Coming is going, going is coming.
10. The hardest is found in the easiest.
11. Heaven and hell exist here and now, within your own mind.
12. Life is the largest stage.
13. Music is one of the most supreme expressions of life. It is art in it’s most transitory form. It is gone within an instant, and therefore, extremely precious.
14. Follow your gut, you’ll thank yourself later.
15. Remember what your mother taught you, it came from the most sacred place of love that exists.
16. Never let an argument last, never hold a grudge, it will make your heart heavy.
17. Forgive those that have yet to do you wrong, and you won’t have to worry about it should the time come.
18. Be grateful for this moment, it is all there is.
19. The source of most of your frustrations and anxiety are the result of living in the future, or the past.
20. Spend time alone with yourself every day.
21. Always go with yourself, never against yourself.
22. You have to be your own best friend.
23. If you don’t like what someone else says to you, you can walk away. But if you don’t like what you say to yourself, you can’t walk away. Therefore, if you’re going to be with yourself all the time, you might as well be nice to yourself.
24. The truth shall indeed set you free.
25. Lies only exist if we believe in them.
26. Even the most fundamental beliefs about reality are not true in themselves. Our thinking makes them true in our experience.
27. Your thoughts create reality.
28. The biggest lie is the lie of your imperfection.
29. Being kind is more important than being right.
30. Your heart is your best compass. - not sure on this one...it seems to lead me down a painful path often...
31. Cherish those that you love, you never know if you’ll see them again.
32. Your beliefs are a filter for your reality.
33. Love is the supreme expression of life, it is the essence and ground of all creation.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Dell Technicians Lie About Inspiron Laptop Repairs
Dell Technicians Lie About Inspiron Laptop Repairs
Dell Technicians Lied About Repairs
December 24, 2008
dell-logo
A paid submission by Gerri :
In June, I received a Dell Inspiron 1525 notebook computer as a gift. On the morning of November 9, I noticed that the computer was displaying animated pixels on the screen and I made a call to Dell tech support. Of course, the wait time for help was excessive, but that was expected. Eventually Jacob came on the line and attempted to help me.
Jacob conducted extensive diagnostics via remote access to the computer and concluded that it had a defective graphics card. The problem was that the graphics card and motherboard on this model are integrated and one cannot be replaced without the other.
No problem though, Jacob explained. My Dell Inspiron 1525 is under warranty and I would simply have to send it in for the repair.
I understand that in the world of manufacturing sometimes defective parts make it through inspection and their defects are only revealed after being sold to customers. While it was inconvenient to have to pack up a computer and send it away for repairs, I wasn’t angry or upset about it. I still felt good about Dell products and customer support at this point.
However, my faith in Dell was quickly diminished by my next contact with them.
On November 18, I was notified by Dell’s “Out of Warranty” department that my Dell Inspiron required repairs that would not be covered by the warranty. The repairs listed on this notice were the graphics card, motherboard, and LCD.
I decided that there must have been some kind of mistake in handling my warranty claim and called Dell to talk about the repairs. After speaking with Sheeba, who read from a script and demanded $350 for the repairs, I asked to speak with a supervisor.
A supervisor came on the line and told me that my computer had “spill damage” and that this type of damage was not covered by the warranty. When I explained to him that I was positive that a spill had not occurred, he offered to send me pictures of the supposed spill damage on the inside of the Dell Inspiron. I said that I would look forward to seeing the pictures and ended the call.
dell-inspiron-laptopOn November 19 and three days following, I received identical pre-formatted emails demanding payment for the repairs on the Inspiron. None of these canned emails contained the pictures of the alleged spill damage that I had been promised. All of the notices simply warned me to pay up, or my computer would be returned to me on November 24.
I called Dell again to ask about the pictures of the supposed spill damage that they claim caused the Inspiron to malfunction. I was assured that I would receive these pictures within 24 hours. Today is December 16 and I have yet to receive any such picture.
I submitted online support requests explaining the situation in detail with both the Dell Tech Support and Dell Customer Support departments. I received auto-responder emails letting me know how important I am as a customer and then an email that seemed to be from an actual human being. However, this email promised a further response and update on the situation within 24-48 hours. I never heard back from Dell.
As a last resort, I tried Dell Tech Support online chat on November 23. I was connected with “Srikanth_187924” who informed me that of course, Dell Tech Support technicians are highly trained and did not make a mistake:
quotation-marks-start
11/23/2008 09:29:25PM Agent (Srikanth_187924): “Gerri actually the Depot technicians are trained technicians and they would not give any false report about their examination.”
11/23/2008 09:29:50PM Agent (Srikanth_187924): “As a customer myself I would be just quotation-marks-end1as upset if placed in this position but there is no chance of the technicians making a mistake.”
Srikanth promised to have someone call me about the issue within 24 hours, and hoped that I would enjoy the “world class customer service” that Dell is known for. I told him, tongue in cheek, that I had confidence that Dell would act in good faith.
No Dell representative called me. I did, however, receive a customer satisfaction survey email, which I ignored. Then a friendly reminder about the customer satisfaction survey came and I felt obligated to answer it honestly.
This customer is not satisfied by any stretch of the imagination. After researching the problem with my Dell Inspiron, I found that Dell has accused many other customers of trying to pass off spill damage as a defect. I can only assume from all of the stories that I’ve read, some on Dell’s own forums, that Dell’s first line of defense against a warranty claim is to tell the customer that they’ve damaged their own computer by spilling liquid on it. One Dell representative even told a customer that Dell computers never have defective parts!
On November 26, my Dell Inspiron arrived on my doorstep. A note in the box said that the repairs had been done, although the checklist of repairs was left blank. I crossed my fingers and attempted to boot up the computer. Needless to say, my computer was not repaired.
Curiously enough, on December 1st I received another email from Dell. This email advised me that my computer had been repaired and was on its way back to me.
Therefore, what I was left with was a broken computer, which my own computer expert says was not damaged by a liquid. If the computer was booted to a DOS prompt or configuration screen, there was no display problem. The problem occurred only after Windows loaded.
My dad called me a few days later and told me that he had talked to the manager at the Sam’s Club where the computer had been purchased. The manager said that if I had the receipt, and the purchase was made less than six months ago that I could return the computer for an exchange.
Before packing the Dell Inspiron up to return it, I decided to reformat the hard drive. When I reinstalled Windows Vista, to my surprise, the display problem had vanished! This means that not only was the problem a software problem, but that the Dell technicians had blatantly lied about the replacement of any parts being necessary.
To me, this matter is no longer about a cheap computer or expensive repairs. I have to wonder how many other Dell customers may have been duped into paying for repairs that should have been covered by the warranty or needed their computer back so badly that they were forced into paying for expensive repairs that the computer did not even need.
So, if you have been thinking of buying a Dell computer this holiday season, you may want to reconsider. Perhaps dealing with an honest company that honors warranty claims would be a better choice.
Dell Technicians Lied About Repairs
December 24, 2008
dell-logo
A paid submission by Gerri :
In June, I received a Dell Inspiron 1525 notebook computer as a gift. On the morning of November 9, I noticed that the computer was displaying animated pixels on the screen and I made a call to Dell tech support. Of course, the wait time for help was excessive, but that was expected. Eventually Jacob came on the line and attempted to help me.
Jacob conducted extensive diagnostics via remote access to the computer and concluded that it had a defective graphics card. The problem was that the graphics card and motherboard on this model are integrated and one cannot be replaced without the other.
No problem though, Jacob explained. My Dell Inspiron 1525 is under warranty and I would simply have to send it in for the repair.
I understand that in the world of manufacturing sometimes defective parts make it through inspection and their defects are only revealed after being sold to customers. While it was inconvenient to have to pack up a computer and send it away for repairs, I wasn’t angry or upset about it. I still felt good about Dell products and customer support at this point.
However, my faith in Dell was quickly diminished by my next contact with them.
On November 18, I was notified by Dell’s “Out of Warranty” department that my Dell Inspiron required repairs that would not be covered by the warranty. The repairs listed on this notice were the graphics card, motherboard, and LCD.
I decided that there must have been some kind of mistake in handling my warranty claim and called Dell to talk about the repairs. After speaking with Sheeba, who read from a script and demanded $350 for the repairs, I asked to speak with a supervisor.
A supervisor came on the line and told me that my computer had “spill damage” and that this type of damage was not covered by the warranty. When I explained to him that I was positive that a spill had not occurred, he offered to send me pictures of the supposed spill damage on the inside of the Dell Inspiron. I said that I would look forward to seeing the pictures and ended the call.
dell-inspiron-laptopOn November 19 and three days following, I received identical pre-formatted emails demanding payment for the repairs on the Inspiron. None of these canned emails contained the pictures of the alleged spill damage that I had been promised. All of the notices simply warned me to pay up, or my computer would be returned to me on November 24.
I called Dell again to ask about the pictures of the supposed spill damage that they claim caused the Inspiron to malfunction. I was assured that I would receive these pictures within 24 hours. Today is December 16 and I have yet to receive any such picture.
I submitted online support requests explaining the situation in detail with both the Dell Tech Support and Dell Customer Support departments. I received auto-responder emails letting me know how important I am as a customer and then an email that seemed to be from an actual human being. However, this email promised a further response and update on the situation within 24-48 hours. I never heard back from Dell.
As a last resort, I tried Dell Tech Support online chat on November 23. I was connected with “Srikanth_187924” who informed me that of course, Dell Tech Support technicians are highly trained and did not make a mistake:
quotation-marks-start
11/23/2008 09:29:25PM Agent (Srikanth_187924): “Gerri actually the Depot technicians are trained technicians and they would not give any false report about their examination.”
11/23/2008 09:29:50PM Agent (Srikanth_187924): “As a customer myself I would be just quotation-marks-end1as upset if placed in this position but there is no chance of the technicians making a mistake.”
Srikanth promised to have someone call me about the issue within 24 hours, and hoped that I would enjoy the “world class customer service” that Dell is known for. I told him, tongue in cheek, that I had confidence that Dell would act in good faith.
No Dell representative called me. I did, however, receive a customer satisfaction survey email, which I ignored. Then a friendly reminder about the customer satisfaction survey came and I felt obligated to answer it honestly.
This customer is not satisfied by any stretch of the imagination. After researching the problem with my Dell Inspiron, I found that Dell has accused many other customers of trying to pass off spill damage as a defect. I can only assume from all of the stories that I’ve read, some on Dell’s own forums, that Dell’s first line of defense against a warranty claim is to tell the customer that they’ve damaged their own computer by spilling liquid on it. One Dell representative even told a customer that Dell computers never have defective parts!
On November 26, my Dell Inspiron arrived on my doorstep. A note in the box said that the repairs had been done, although the checklist of repairs was left blank. I crossed my fingers and attempted to boot up the computer. Needless to say, my computer was not repaired.
Curiously enough, on December 1st I received another email from Dell. This email advised me that my computer had been repaired and was on its way back to me.
Therefore, what I was left with was a broken computer, which my own computer expert says was not damaged by a liquid. If the computer was booted to a DOS prompt or configuration screen, there was no display problem. The problem occurred only after Windows loaded.
My dad called me a few days later and told me that he had talked to the manager at the Sam’s Club where the computer had been purchased. The manager said that if I had the receipt, and the purchase was made less than six months ago that I could return the computer for an exchange.
Before packing the Dell Inspiron up to return it, I decided to reformat the hard drive. When I reinstalled Windows Vista, to my surprise, the display problem had vanished! This means that not only was the problem a software problem, but that the Dell technicians had blatantly lied about the replacement of any parts being necessary.
To me, this matter is no longer about a cheap computer or expensive repairs. I have to wonder how many other Dell customers may have been duped into paying for repairs that should have been covered by the warranty or needed their computer back so badly that they were forced into paying for expensive repairs that the computer did not even need.
So, if you have been thinking of buying a Dell computer this holiday season, you may want to reconsider. Perhaps dealing with an honest company that honors warranty claims would be a better choice.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
A Little Inspiration
A Little Inspiration
A Little Inspiration
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, It is between you and God;
It never was between you and them anyway.
Author Unknown
A Little Inspiration
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, It is between you and God;
It never was between you and them anyway.
Author Unknown
Friday, December 5, 2008
Stuff On My Cat - This is my cat Carl: The Switch
this gave me a good laugh when i truly needed it...hehehe
Stuff On My Cat - This is my cat Carl: The Switch
Stuff On My Cat - This is my cat Carl: The Switch
Friday, November 21, 2008
You Can Forget My Taxes - The Daily Beast
You Can Forget My Taxes - The Daily Beast
Singer Melissa Etheridge rails against the passage of the gay-marriage ban in California—and she won't be paying the state a dime.
Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean, roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.
Okay, cool I don't mean to get too personal here but there is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California. Oh, and I am sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that she pays in taxes too. Wow, come to think of it, there are quite a few of us fortunate gay folks that will be having some extra cash this year. What recession? We're gay! I am sure there will be a little box on the tax forms now single, married, divorced, gay, check here if you are gay, yeah, that's not so bad. Of course all of the waiters and hairdressers and UPS workers and gym teachers and such, they won't have to pay their taxes either.
Gay people are born everyday. You will never legislate that away.
Oh and too bad California, I know you were looking forward to the revenue from all of those extra marriages. I guess you will have to find some other way to get out of the budget trouble you are in.
…Really?
When did it become okay to legislate morality? I try to envision someone reading that legislation "eliminates the right" and then clicking yes. What goes through their mind? Was it the frightening commercial where the little girl comes home and says, "Hi mom, we learned about gays in class today" and then the mother gets that awful worried look and the scary music plays? Do they not know anyone who is gay? If they do, can they look them in the face and say "I believe you do not deserve the same rights as me"? Do they think that their children will never encounter a gay person? Do they think they will never have to explain the 20% of us who are gay and living and working side by side with all the citizens of California?
I got news for them, someday your child is going to come home and ask you what a gay person is. Gay people are born everyday. You will never legislate that away.
I know when I grew up gay was a bad word. Homo, lezzie, faggot, dyke. Ignorance and fear ruled the day. There were so many "thems" back then. The blacks, the poor ... you know, "them". Then there was the immigrants. "Them.” Now the them is me.
I tell myself to take a breath, okay take another one, one of the thems made it to the top. Obama has been elected president. This crazy fearful insanity will end soon. This great state and this great country of ours will finally come to the understanding that there is no "them". We are one. We are united. What you do to someone else you do to yourself. That "judge not, lest ye yourself be judged" are truthful words and not Christian rhetoric.
Today the gay citizenry of this state will pick themselves up and dust themselves off and do what we have been doing for years. We will get back into it. We love this state, we love this country and we are not going to leave it. Even though we could be married in Mass. or Conn, Canada, Holland, Spain and a handful of other countries, this is our home. This is where we work and play and raise our families. We will not rest until we have the full rights of any other citizen. It is that simple, no fearful vote will ever stop us, that is not the American way.
Come to think of it, I should get a federal tax break too...
Melissa Etheridge is an Academy Award-winning and Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter.
Singer Melissa Etheridge rails against the passage of the gay-marriage ban in California—and she won't be paying the state a dime.
Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean, roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books.
Okay, cool I don't mean to get too personal here but there is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California. Oh, and I am sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that she pays in taxes too. Wow, come to think of it, there are quite a few of us fortunate gay folks that will be having some extra cash this year. What recession? We're gay! I am sure there will be a little box on the tax forms now single, married, divorced, gay, check here if you are gay, yeah, that's not so bad. Of course all of the waiters and hairdressers and UPS workers and gym teachers and such, they won't have to pay their taxes either.
Gay people are born everyday. You will never legislate that away.
Oh and too bad California, I know you were looking forward to the revenue from all of those extra marriages. I guess you will have to find some other way to get out of the budget trouble you are in.
…Really?
When did it become okay to legislate morality? I try to envision someone reading that legislation "eliminates the right" and then clicking yes. What goes through their mind? Was it the frightening commercial where the little girl comes home and says, "Hi mom, we learned about gays in class today" and then the mother gets that awful worried look and the scary music plays? Do they not know anyone who is gay? If they do, can they look them in the face and say "I believe you do not deserve the same rights as me"? Do they think that their children will never encounter a gay person? Do they think they will never have to explain the 20% of us who are gay and living and working side by side with all the citizens of California?
I got news for them, someday your child is going to come home and ask you what a gay person is. Gay people are born everyday. You will never legislate that away.
I know when I grew up gay was a bad word. Homo, lezzie, faggot, dyke. Ignorance and fear ruled the day. There were so many "thems" back then. The blacks, the poor ... you know, "them". Then there was the immigrants. "Them.” Now the them is me.
I tell myself to take a breath, okay take another one, one of the thems made it to the top. Obama has been elected president. This crazy fearful insanity will end soon. This great state and this great country of ours will finally come to the understanding that there is no "them". We are one. We are united. What you do to someone else you do to yourself. That "judge not, lest ye yourself be judged" are truthful words and not Christian rhetoric.
Today the gay citizenry of this state will pick themselves up and dust themselves off and do what we have been doing for years. We will get back into it. We love this state, we love this country and we are not going to leave it. Even though we could be married in Mass. or Conn, Canada, Holland, Spain and a handful of other countries, this is our home. This is where we work and play and raise our families. We will not rest until we have the full rights of any other citizen. It is that simple, no fearful vote will ever stop us, that is not the American way.
Come to think of it, I should get a federal tax break too...
Melissa Etheridge is an Academy Award-winning and Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Haywire Hacking ~ Anyone Can Hack - Main - Hacking Google: Turning a Search Engine into an MP3�Downloader
-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) ""
this is cool!
Haywire Hacking ~ Anyone Can Hack - Main - Hacking Google: Turning a Search Engine into an MP3�Downloader: "-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:'index of' 'last modified' 'parent directory' description size (wma|mp3) '"
this is cool!
Haywire Hacking ~ Anyone Can Hack - Main - Hacking Google: Turning a Search Engine into an MP3�Downloader: "-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:'index of' 'last modified' 'parent directory' description size (wma|mp3) '"
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Do you make these 10 mistakes in a conversation?
Not listening
Ernest Hemingway once said:
“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
Don’t be like most people. Don’t just wait eagerly for your turn to talk. Put your own ego on hold. Learn to really listen to what people actually are saying.
When you start to really listen, you’ll pick up on loads of potential paths in the conversation. But avoid yes or no type of questions as they will not give you much information. If someone mentions that they went fishing with a couple of friends last weekend you can for instance ask:
* Where did you go fishing?
* What do you like most about fishing?
* What did you do there besides fishing?
The person will delve deeper into the subject giving you more information to work with and more paths for you choose from.
If they say something like: “Oh, I don’t know” at first, don’t give up. Prod a little further. Ask again. They do know, they just have to think about a bit more. And as they start to open up the conversation becomes more interesting because it’s not on auto-pilot anymore.
Asking too many questions
If you ask too many questions the conversation can feel like a bit of an interrogation. Or like you don’t have that much too contribute. One alternative is to mix questions with statements. Continuing the conversation above you could skip the question and say:
* Yeah, it’s great to just get out with your friends and relax over the weekend. We like to take a six-pack out to the park and play some Frisbee golf.
* Nice. We went out in my friend’s boat last month and I tried these new lures from Sakamura. The blue ones were really great.
And then the conversation can flow on from there. And you can discuss Frisbee golf, the advantages/disadvantages of different lures or your favourite beer.
Tightening up
When in conversation with someone you just meet or when the usual few topics are exhausted an awkward silence or mood might appear. Or you might just become nervous not knowing exactly why.
* Leil Lowndes once said: “Never leave home without reading the newspaper.” If you’re running out of things to say, you can always start talking about the current news. It’s also good to stay updated on current water cooler-topics. Like what happened on the latest episode of Lost.
* Comment on the aquarium at the party, or that one girl’s cool Halloween-costume or the host’s mp3-playlist. You can always start new conversations about something in your surroundings.
* Assume rapport. If you feel nervous or weird when meeting someone for the first time assume rapport. What that means is that you imagine how you feel when you meet one of your best friends. And pretend that this new acquaintance is one of your best friends. Don’t overdo it though, you might not want to hug and kiss right away. But if you imagine this you’ll go into a positive emotional state. And you’ll greet and start talking to this new person with a smile and a friendly and relaxed attitude. Because that’s how you talk to your friends. It might sound a bit loopy or too simple. But it really works.
Poor delivery
One of the most important things in a conversation is not what you say, but how you say it. A change in these habits can make a big difference since your voice and body language is a vital part of communication. Some things to think about:
* Slowing down. When you get excited about something it’s easy to start talking faster and faster. Try and slow down. It will make it much easier for people to listen and for you actually get what you are saying across to them.
* Speaking up. Don’t be afraid to talk as loud as you need to for people to hear you.
* Speaking clearly. Don’t mumble.
* Speak with emotion. No one listens for that long if you speak with a monotone voice. Let your feelings be reflected in your voice.
* Using pauses. Slowing down your talking plus adding a small pause between thoughts or sentences creates a bit of tension and anticipation. People will start to listen more attentively to what you’re saying. Listen to one of Brian Tracys cds or Steve Pavlina’s podcasts. Listen to how using small pauses makes what they are saying seem even more interesting.
* Learn a bit about improving your body language as it can make your delivery a lot more effective. Read about laughter, posture and how to hold your drink in 18 ways to improve your body language.
Hogging the spot-light
I’ve been guilty of this one on more occasions than I wish to remember. :) Everyone involved in a conversation should get their time in the spotlight. Don’t interrupt someone when they are telling some anecdote or their view on what you are discussing to divert the attention back to yourself. Don’t hijack their story about skiing before it’s finished to share your best skiing-anecdote. Find a balance between listening and talking.
Having to be right
Avoid arguing and having to being right about every topic. Often a conversation is not really a discussion. It’s a more of a way to keep a good mood going. No one will be that impressed if you “win” every conversation. Instead just sit back, relax and help keep the good feelings going.
Talking about a weird or negative topic
If you’re at a party or somewhere were you are just getting to know some people you might want to avoid some topics. Talking about your bad health or relationships, your crappy job or boss, serial killers, technical lingo that only you and some other guy understands or anything that sucks the positive energy out of the conversation are topics to steer clear from. You might also want to save religion and politics for conversations with your friends.
Being boring
Don’t prattle on about your new car for 10 minutes oblivious to your surroundings. Always be prepared to drop a subject when you start to bore people. Or when everyone is getting bored and the topic is starting to run out of steam.
One good way to have something interesting to say is simply to lead an interesting life. And to focus on the positive stuff. Don’t start to whine about your boss or your job, people don’t want to hear that. Instead, talk about your last trip somewhere, some funny anecdote that happened while you where buying clothes, your plans for New Years Eve or something funny or exciting.
Another way is just to be genuinely interested. As Dale Carnegie said:
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.”
Knowing a little about many things or at least being open to talk about them instead of trying to steer the conversation back to your favourite subject is a nice quality.
Meaning: talking for what seems like hours about one topic. Topics may include work, favourite rock-band, TV-show and more work.
Opening up a bit and not clinging desperately to one topic will make the conversation feel more relaxed and open. You will come across like a person who can talk about many things with ease. As you’ve probably experienced with other people; this quality is something you appreciate in a conversation and makes you feel like you can connect to that person easily.
Not reciprocating
Open up and say what you think, share how you feel. If someone shares an experience, open up too and share one of your experiences. Don’t just stand there nodding and answer with short sentences. If someone is investing in the conversation they’d like you to invest too.
Like in so many areas in life, you can’t always wait for the other party to make the first move. When needed, be proactive and be the first one to open up and invest in the conversation. One way is by replacing some questions with statements. It makes you less passive and makes take a sort of stand.
Not contributing much
You might feel that you don’t have much to contribute to a conversation. But try anyway. Really listen and be interested in what the others are saying. Ask questions. Make relating statements.
Open your eyes too. Develop your observational skills to pick up interesting stuff in your surroundings to talk about. Develop your personal knowledge-bank by expanding your view of interesting things in the world. Read the newspapers and keep an eye on new water cooler-topics.
Work on your body language, how you talk and try assuming rapport to improve your communication skills.
But take it easy. Don’t do it all at once. You’ll just feel confused and overwhelmed. Instead, pick out the three most important things that you feel needs improving. Work on them every day for 3-4 weeks. Notice the difference and keep at it. Soon your new habits will start to pop up spontaneously when you are in a conversation
Do you make these 10 mistakes in a conversation?
Ernest Hemingway once said:
“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
Don’t be like most people. Don’t just wait eagerly for your turn to talk. Put your own ego on hold. Learn to really listen to what people actually are saying.
When you start to really listen, you’ll pick up on loads of potential paths in the conversation. But avoid yes or no type of questions as they will not give you much information. If someone mentions that they went fishing with a couple of friends last weekend you can for instance ask:
* Where did you go fishing?
* What do you like most about fishing?
* What did you do there besides fishing?
The person will delve deeper into the subject giving you more information to work with and more paths for you choose from.
If they say something like: “Oh, I don’t know” at first, don’t give up. Prod a little further. Ask again. They do know, they just have to think about a bit more. And as they start to open up the conversation becomes more interesting because it’s not on auto-pilot anymore.
Asking too many questions
If you ask too many questions the conversation can feel like a bit of an interrogation. Or like you don’t have that much too contribute. One alternative is to mix questions with statements. Continuing the conversation above you could skip the question and say:
* Yeah, it’s great to just get out with your friends and relax over the weekend. We like to take a six-pack out to the park and play some Frisbee golf.
* Nice. We went out in my friend’s boat last month and I tried these new lures from Sakamura. The blue ones were really great.
And then the conversation can flow on from there. And you can discuss Frisbee golf, the advantages/disadvantages of different lures or your favourite beer.
Tightening up
When in conversation with someone you just meet or when the usual few topics are exhausted an awkward silence or mood might appear. Or you might just become nervous not knowing exactly why.
* Leil Lowndes once said: “Never leave home without reading the newspaper.” If you’re running out of things to say, you can always start talking about the current news. It’s also good to stay updated on current water cooler-topics. Like what happened on the latest episode of Lost.
* Comment on the aquarium at the party, or that one girl’s cool Halloween-costume or the host’s mp3-playlist. You can always start new conversations about something in your surroundings.
* Assume rapport. If you feel nervous or weird when meeting someone for the first time assume rapport. What that means is that you imagine how you feel when you meet one of your best friends. And pretend that this new acquaintance is one of your best friends. Don’t overdo it though, you might not want to hug and kiss right away. But if you imagine this you’ll go into a positive emotional state. And you’ll greet and start talking to this new person with a smile and a friendly and relaxed attitude. Because that’s how you talk to your friends. It might sound a bit loopy or too simple. But it really works.
Poor delivery
One of the most important things in a conversation is not what you say, but how you say it. A change in these habits can make a big difference since your voice and body language is a vital part of communication. Some things to think about:
* Slowing down. When you get excited about something it’s easy to start talking faster and faster. Try and slow down. It will make it much easier for people to listen and for you actually get what you are saying across to them.
* Speaking up. Don’t be afraid to talk as loud as you need to for people to hear you.
* Speaking clearly. Don’t mumble.
* Speak with emotion. No one listens for that long if you speak with a monotone voice. Let your feelings be reflected in your voice.
* Using pauses. Slowing down your talking plus adding a small pause between thoughts or sentences creates a bit of tension and anticipation. People will start to listen more attentively to what you’re saying. Listen to one of Brian Tracys cds or Steve Pavlina’s podcasts. Listen to how using small pauses makes what they are saying seem even more interesting.
* Learn a bit about improving your body language as it can make your delivery a lot more effective. Read about laughter, posture and how to hold your drink in 18 ways to improve your body language.
Hogging the spot-light
I’ve been guilty of this one on more occasions than I wish to remember. :) Everyone involved in a conversation should get their time in the spotlight. Don’t interrupt someone when they are telling some anecdote or their view on what you are discussing to divert the attention back to yourself. Don’t hijack their story about skiing before it’s finished to share your best skiing-anecdote. Find a balance between listening and talking.
Having to be right
Avoid arguing and having to being right about every topic. Often a conversation is not really a discussion. It’s a more of a way to keep a good mood going. No one will be that impressed if you “win” every conversation. Instead just sit back, relax and help keep the good feelings going.
Talking about a weird or negative topic
If you’re at a party or somewhere were you are just getting to know some people you might want to avoid some topics. Talking about your bad health or relationships, your crappy job or boss, serial killers, technical lingo that only you and some other guy understands or anything that sucks the positive energy out of the conversation are topics to steer clear from. You might also want to save religion and politics for conversations with your friends.
Being boring
Don’t prattle on about your new car for 10 minutes oblivious to your surroundings. Always be prepared to drop a subject when you start to bore people. Or when everyone is getting bored and the topic is starting to run out of steam.
One good way to have something interesting to say is simply to lead an interesting life. And to focus on the positive stuff. Don’t start to whine about your boss or your job, people don’t want to hear that. Instead, talk about your last trip somewhere, some funny anecdote that happened while you where buying clothes, your plans for New Years Eve or something funny or exciting.
Another way is just to be genuinely interested. As Dale Carnegie said:
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Which is just another way of saying that the way to make a friend is to be one.”
Knowing a little about many things or at least being open to talk about them instead of trying to steer the conversation back to your favourite subject is a nice quality.
Meaning: talking for what seems like hours about one topic. Topics may include work, favourite rock-band, TV-show and more work.
Opening up a bit and not clinging desperately to one topic will make the conversation feel more relaxed and open. You will come across like a person who can talk about many things with ease. As you’ve probably experienced with other people; this quality is something you appreciate in a conversation and makes you feel like you can connect to that person easily.
Not reciprocating
Open up and say what you think, share how you feel. If someone shares an experience, open up too and share one of your experiences. Don’t just stand there nodding and answer with short sentences. If someone is investing in the conversation they’d like you to invest too.
Like in so many areas in life, you can’t always wait for the other party to make the first move. When needed, be proactive and be the first one to open up and invest in the conversation. One way is by replacing some questions with statements. It makes you less passive and makes take a sort of stand.
Not contributing much
You might feel that you don’t have much to contribute to a conversation. But try anyway. Really listen and be interested in what the others are saying. Ask questions. Make relating statements.
Open your eyes too. Develop your observational skills to pick up interesting stuff in your surroundings to talk about. Develop your personal knowledge-bank by expanding your view of interesting things in the world. Read the newspapers and keep an eye on new water cooler-topics.
Work on your body language, how you talk and try assuming rapport to improve your communication skills.
But take it easy. Don’t do it all at once. You’ll just feel confused and overwhelmed. Instead, pick out the three most important things that you feel needs improving. Work on them every day for 3-4 weeks. Notice the difference and keep at it. Soon your new habits will start to pop up spontaneously when you are in a conversation
Do you make these 10 mistakes in a conversation?
16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School at Personal Development with The Positivity Blog
1. The 80/20 rule.
This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.
So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.
You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.
And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.
2. Parkinson’s Law.
You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.
So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.
The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.
3. Batching.
Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less “start-up time” compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.
A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.
4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.
This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.
If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.
5. Be proactive. Not reactive.
This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.
A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.
6. Mistakes and failures are good.
When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from - for example - school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.
This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?
Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.
And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.
When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way - instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.
7. Don’t beat yourself up.
Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.
8. Assume rapport.
Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.
The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.
This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.
9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.
I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.
So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.
Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.
10. Your attitude changes your reality.
We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.
But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.
When you change you attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.
This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.
If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analysing such a concept in your mind - you’ll be surprised.
You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!
11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.
Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.
12. Don’t compare yourself to others.
The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.
A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown. It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.
13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.
This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.
This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.
14. Don’t take things too seriously.
It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.
Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.
15. Write everything down.
If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.
16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.
In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow. Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.
Whenever you have a “negative experience” ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very positive experiences.
16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School at Personal Development with The Positivity Blog
This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.
So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.
You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.
And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.
2. Parkinson’s Law.
You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.
So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.
The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.
3. Batching.
Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less “start-up time” compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.
A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.
4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.
This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.
If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.
5. Be proactive. Not reactive.
This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.
A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.
6. Mistakes and failures are good.
When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from - for example - school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.
This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?
Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.
And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.
When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way - instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.
7. Don’t beat yourself up.
Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.
8. Assume rapport.
Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.
The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.
This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.
9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.
I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.
So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.
Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.
10. Your attitude changes your reality.
We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.
But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.
When you change you attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.
This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.
If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analysing such a concept in your mind - you’ll be surprised.
You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!
11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.
Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.
12. Don’t compare yourself to others.
The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.
A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown. It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.
13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.
This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.
This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.
14. Don’t take things too seriously.
It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.
Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.
15. Write everything down.
If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.
16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.
In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow. Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.
Whenever you have a “negative experience” ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very positive experiences.
16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School at Personal Development with The Positivity Blog
Take the Positivity Challenge! (long)
“Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.”
- Viktor Frankl
The Positivity Challenge is this: For 7 days you will try to only think positive thoughts. Whatever happens to you will see the good side of it and what positive things you can learn and take away from it. By the end of the week you will have started to discover the very real benefits of a positive thinking, how much negative thoughts there are both in you and the world (you might be surprised) and begun establishing a new habit to replace your old, less constructive one. And then you can continue from there.
What I suggesting here is not a mindless kind of positive thinking where you pretend everything is ok whilst the house and your bed is actually on fire. Instead it’s you noticing a situation or stimuli and then choosing a positive and useful response to it instead of reacting in a knee-jerk way.
It´s you focusing on what could be a more positive and useful solution for you. Or even better, what could be a win-win situation if the situation involves other people (which many important situations in our lives do). A win-win solution is more often an even more satisfying and beneficial solution than the one where only you win.
Now, how to go about it? Here are three tips for the first week.
Cut the negative threads quickly. Only allow yourself to go on a negative thread of thought for a set time-period, perhaps 30 seconds or a minute. Then just cut it off, drop it and think about what positive things you can get out of this situation. Don´t feed the negative thoughts with more energy or you might trap your mind in a downward spiral for quite a while. If you start going down a negative thread of thought it is important to cut it fast.
Realise that it is possible to choose what you think about and how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. Being reactive to everything is not very empowering. You have a choice. But it might take some time to make this click in your mind. Even though I understood this intellectually pretty fast it took a longer time to understand and accept it emotionally and on a deeper level.
Focus on the gap between stimuli and reaction. The more you think about this and try to use it by consciously choosing, over time (for me it was months but it can surely be achieved quicker) the gap will appear larger and larger and that will make the process easier.
Accept your feelings, don´t deny or refuse them – Although it´s often possible to just quickly cut off negative thoughts sometimes it might not be enough. Negative emotions can build up within you over time or you might feel be overwhelmed by a certain situation. Then you can try the counter-intuitive way and not keep the feeling out by fighting it.
Instead, accept the feeling. Say yes to it. Surrender and let it in.
Observe the feeling in your mind and body without judging it. If you just let it in and observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. It sounds weird but give it a try.
In addition, here´s a bunch of other suggestions – some of them you might not be able to use fully within a week but instead over a longer time-span - to make this challenge easier and improve your life.
Get the physical fundamentals down. If you don´t have time to sleep a healthy amount of hours, eat properly and get exercise then you need to reprioritize. If you don´t do this it will be harder to become and stay positive. If you do reprioritize, your general sense of well-being will increase, you will feel stronger and have more energy. Use Where is your really time going? and Prioritize with the Pareto Principle to make better use of your time. Decrease stress using those two articles and the rest in the series How to double your productivity. Also, check out this simple way to feel really relaxed.
Act as if. Smile to feel happier. Move slower to relax. Use positive language. Act as if you are a positive person and you will start to feel and become more positive. It might feel weird at first, but it really works.
Start your day in a better way. Check out these five tips for a better beginning to your day.
Limit your time with really negative people – Some people feed on negative energy and whatever you try it never pleases them or changes their sour minds and moods. If nothing you do works then finally you might have to cut them out of your life or at least limit your time with them.
Model positive people. Find positive people in your surroundings or anywhere in time and space (through documentaries, biographies etc.) and learn from them. Find out how they handle everyday life, problems, setbacks and compare it to your own thoughts and how you would handle similar situations.
Focus on the now and future, not the past. A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about on the mistakes they made in past. A better way is to think about the mistake you made and what you can learn from it. Then stop wasting your time and shift your focus to the present and the future where you can actually make a change.
Redefine “failure” and “proof”. You don´t have to learn much about successful people to realize that one of their key-strengths is that their way of looking at failure is widely different from more common one in society. As Michael Jordan said:
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Also, in a similar vain, thinking one example represents the whole world might not be the most helpful belief to hold. Yes, someone may have cheated on you, treated you badly at work before you were fired and your first business venture may have gone down in flames. But applying one or two bad examples to the whole world and the rest of your life will cause suffering for you long after those hurtful events happened. And could set you up for even more pain and disappointment through self-fulfilling prophecies and the Law of Attraction.
I don´t think these all these words are the truth about how the world around you and me works. Just as a pessimistic (or realistic) view of the world is not the truth either. I don´t believe there is one truth, but rather that the world changes due to the beliefs you have about it and the actions you take based on your beliefs. I do believe that this is a more useful model of how to view and interact with the world than a pessimistic one and that it´s a more enjoyable way of thinking. It is a way of thinking that increases happiness and joy in life. Something I think just about everyone wants.
“Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me,
for every man is a mirror.
We see only ourselves reflected in those around us.
Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own.
The whole world and its condition has its counterparts within us all.
Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”
- Kirsten Zambucka
Take the Positivity Challenge!
- Viktor Frankl
The Positivity Challenge is this: For 7 days you will try to only think positive thoughts. Whatever happens to you will see the good side of it and what positive things you can learn and take away from it. By the end of the week you will have started to discover the very real benefits of a positive thinking, how much negative thoughts there are both in you and the world (you might be surprised) and begun establishing a new habit to replace your old, less constructive one. And then you can continue from there.
What I suggesting here is not a mindless kind of positive thinking where you pretend everything is ok whilst the house and your bed is actually on fire. Instead it’s you noticing a situation or stimuli and then choosing a positive and useful response to it instead of reacting in a knee-jerk way.
It´s you focusing on what could be a more positive and useful solution for you. Or even better, what could be a win-win situation if the situation involves other people (which many important situations in our lives do). A win-win solution is more often an even more satisfying and beneficial solution than the one where only you win.
Now, how to go about it? Here are three tips for the first week.
Cut the negative threads quickly. Only allow yourself to go on a negative thread of thought for a set time-period, perhaps 30 seconds or a minute. Then just cut it off, drop it and think about what positive things you can get out of this situation. Don´t feed the negative thoughts with more energy or you might trap your mind in a downward spiral for quite a while. If you start going down a negative thread of thought it is important to cut it fast.
Realise that it is possible to choose what you think about and how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. Being reactive to everything is not very empowering. You have a choice. But it might take some time to make this click in your mind. Even though I understood this intellectually pretty fast it took a longer time to understand and accept it emotionally and on a deeper level.
Focus on the gap between stimuli and reaction. The more you think about this and try to use it by consciously choosing, over time (for me it was months but it can surely be achieved quicker) the gap will appear larger and larger and that will make the process easier.
Accept your feelings, don´t deny or refuse them – Although it´s often possible to just quickly cut off negative thoughts sometimes it might not be enough. Negative emotions can build up within you over time or you might feel be overwhelmed by a certain situation. Then you can try the counter-intuitive way and not keep the feeling out by fighting it.
Instead, accept the feeling. Say yes to it. Surrender and let it in.
Observe the feeling in your mind and body without judging it. If you just let it in and observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. It sounds weird but give it a try.
In addition, here´s a bunch of other suggestions – some of them you might not be able to use fully within a week but instead over a longer time-span - to make this challenge easier and improve your life.
Get the physical fundamentals down. If you don´t have time to sleep a healthy amount of hours, eat properly and get exercise then you need to reprioritize. If you don´t do this it will be harder to become and stay positive. If you do reprioritize, your general sense of well-being will increase, you will feel stronger and have more energy. Use Where is your really time going? and Prioritize with the Pareto Principle to make better use of your time. Decrease stress using those two articles and the rest in the series How to double your productivity. Also, check out this simple way to feel really relaxed.
Act as if. Smile to feel happier. Move slower to relax. Use positive language. Act as if you are a positive person and you will start to feel and become more positive. It might feel weird at first, but it really works.
Start your day in a better way. Check out these five tips for a better beginning to your day.
Limit your time with really negative people – Some people feed on negative energy and whatever you try it never pleases them or changes their sour minds and moods. If nothing you do works then finally you might have to cut them out of your life or at least limit your time with them.
Model positive people. Find positive people in your surroundings or anywhere in time and space (through documentaries, biographies etc.) and learn from them. Find out how they handle everyday life, problems, setbacks and compare it to your own thoughts and how you would handle similar situations.
Focus on the now and future, not the past. A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about on the mistakes they made in past. A better way is to think about the mistake you made and what you can learn from it. Then stop wasting your time and shift your focus to the present and the future where you can actually make a change.
Redefine “failure” and “proof”. You don´t have to learn much about successful people to realize that one of their key-strengths is that their way of looking at failure is widely different from more common one in society. As Michael Jordan said:
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Also, in a similar vain, thinking one example represents the whole world might not be the most helpful belief to hold. Yes, someone may have cheated on you, treated you badly at work before you were fired and your first business venture may have gone down in flames. But applying one or two bad examples to the whole world and the rest of your life will cause suffering for you long after those hurtful events happened. And could set you up for even more pain and disappointment through self-fulfilling prophecies and the Law of Attraction.
I don´t think these all these words are the truth about how the world around you and me works. Just as a pessimistic (or realistic) view of the world is not the truth either. I don´t believe there is one truth, but rather that the world changes due to the beliefs you have about it and the actions you take based on your beliefs. I do believe that this is a more useful model of how to view and interact with the world than a pessimistic one and that it´s a more enjoyable way of thinking. It is a way of thinking that increases happiness and joy in life. Something I think just about everyone wants.
“Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me,
for every man is a mirror.
We see only ourselves reflected in those around us.
Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own.
The whole world and its condition has its counterparts within us all.
Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”
- Kirsten Zambucka
Take the Positivity Challenge!
Friday, August 8, 2008
This is some good stuff
Marcus Aurelius’ Six Timeless Observations on Life
marcus aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 until his death in 180. A great thinker, Marcus embodied Plato’s ideal of the philosopher king to a considerable extent. He was a strong emperor, engaging in various wars in defense of the Roman empire for his entire reign, but he was also greatly concerned with social justice and welfare, even going so far as to sell his own possessions to alleviate people’s suffering from famine and plague (from which he died).
Marcus left behind a corpus of writing which, despite it’s antiquity, offers us some truly timeless wisdom. Here are six lessons we can learn from his observations on life.
Lesson #1: We Are Responsible for Our Own Experience of Life
“Such as are your habitual thoughts; such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the color of your thoughts.”
Much has been made recently of the (so called) ‘law of attraction.’ Before ‘The Secret,’ a wealth of writers had tapped into the idea that what happens in our mind is the most important thing in shaping our experience of life. From Norman Vincent Peal’s ‘Amazing Power of Positive Thinking,’ and Joseph Murphy’s ‘Power of the Subconscious Mind’ to
Wallace Wattles ‘Science of Getting Rich,’ all were taking about a truth which Marcus understood so may centuries ago.
Viktor Frankl said that between what happens to us and our response to it, there is a gap, and in that gap lies our whole experience of life. Steven Covey, in his ‘Seven Habits’ called our ability to widen this gap ‘being proactive.’ It is the first habit of a highly effective person to cultivate an awareness that s/he is in control. To coin a phrase, life is what you make it.
Lesson #2: Everything Changes
“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.”
I keep a sign posted over my desk at work. It reads ‘this too will pass.’ It is a reminder to me that, whatever I am experiencing in life, it will disappear and be replaced with something else. Only one thing is certain – everything changes. People who know this and tap into the natural course of change can be very successful. Let’s take one area as an example – the stock market. People who bought stock after the dot com crash, knowing that the market would rebound after such a dramatic fall, reaped enormous rewards. Those who sold when prices had become stupidly inflated and wildly disconnected from earnings, knowing that the market couldn’t keep on rising forever, also did well.
Clinging on to the way things were can be a source of great misery. The past is gone and it’s never coming back; the present is already changing. So why complain that things used to be better? There are opportunities if only we can see that change is coming.
Lesson #3: Live a Real Life
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
I recently picked up a copy of Felix Dennis’ book ‘How to Get Rich’ while waiting for a flight recently. It’s a great read – unlikely to make you rich I suspect, but full of wonderful observations. In the first chapter, Dennis (who is ‘one of the richest self-made men in Britain, according to the back sleeve of the book) tells us that one of the main obstacles to being rich is comfort – a regular paycheck, a pension, a nice title, stock options. In other words, people don’t want to risk losing what they have. In other words, they are afraid. They are not living the life they want because they are scared they might lose more than they gain.
In the British comedy ‘The Office,’ Tim is set to leave his dead end job and go to university when he is given a small promotion. This persuades his to stay at work because although, as he puts it, he has ‘rolled a three and could very well roll a six,’ going to university might not work out – he might end up ‘rolling a one.’
Taking risks is no easy thing, but when we come to the end of it all, shall we regret that we stayed too much in our comfort zone?
Lesson #4: Be Grateful
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
Marcus clearly understood that gratitude is an important commodity to possess. We take so many things for granted, and only when we lose them do we stop to think just how important they were to us. If you cannot sleep because you have stomach ache or you have injured yourself, you will quickly become grateful for a good night’s sleep!
Every day is a gift, and there are so many, many things to be happy about. We all have problems and we all suffer lack and privation, but why not focus on the good things we have? If you can read this, then you have had an education and you are probably rich enough to own a computer and pay for an Internet connection. Make a list of things you can be grateful for – you might be amazed at how long it is!
Lesson #5: Be Detached
“Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.”
Felix Dennis, in his book ‘How to Get Rich,’ speaks plainly about the real meaning of wealth. It is nothing, he says. It isn’t real. Getting rich, he writes, is just a game. If we take the pursuit of wealth (or anything else, for that matter) too seriously, we are likely to fail. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘Plunge into the heat of battle, and keep your heart at the lotus feet of the Lord.’ He is saying, I think, that the battle of life is a game – we must play it with all our heart, but we must not be attached to the outcome. In this detached state, we can be ready and open to receive wealth or success. We can pursue these things with energy and passion, but if we cling to them, or pursue them as something of importance, they are likely to elude us.
Lao Tze, who lived seven hundred years before Marcus Aurelius, wrote
“Those who take hold of the world and act on it
Never, I notice, succeed.
The world is a mysterious instrument,
Not made to be handled.”
It seems that Marcus understood this paradox.
Lesson #6: All Is Well
“Everything is unfolding as it must, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.”
In 1373, Julian of Norwich was suffering from a severe illness. Believing she was near death, she had a series of visions. In one of them, Jesus appeared to her and said, ‘All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.’
The idea that things are unfolding as they should is a common theme in the mystical traditions of the world. Anthony de Mello, in his wonderful book ‘Awareness,’ writes ‘When you awaken, when you understand, when you see, the world becomes right…You’ll never explain it… Life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense out of it.’
The world looks like a big mess to me, but if we take Marcus’ advice, sit quietly, abandon our opinions, and simply observe, then perhaps we shall indeed see that ‘all is well.’
Marcus Aurelius
marcus aurelius
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 until his death in 180. A great thinker, Marcus embodied Plato’s ideal of the philosopher king to a considerable extent. He was a strong emperor, engaging in various wars in defense of the Roman empire for his entire reign, but he was also greatly concerned with social justice and welfare, even going so far as to sell his own possessions to alleviate people’s suffering from famine and plague (from which he died).
Marcus left behind a corpus of writing which, despite it’s antiquity, offers us some truly timeless wisdom. Here are six lessons we can learn from his observations on life.
Lesson #1: We Are Responsible for Our Own Experience of Life
“Such as are your habitual thoughts; such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the color of your thoughts.”
Much has been made recently of the (so called) ‘law of attraction.’ Before ‘The Secret,’ a wealth of writers had tapped into the idea that what happens in our mind is the most important thing in shaping our experience of life. From Norman Vincent Peal’s ‘Amazing Power of Positive Thinking,’ and Joseph Murphy’s ‘Power of the Subconscious Mind’ to
Wallace Wattles ‘Science of Getting Rich,’ all were taking about a truth which Marcus understood so may centuries ago.
Viktor Frankl said that between what happens to us and our response to it, there is a gap, and in that gap lies our whole experience of life. Steven Covey, in his ‘Seven Habits’ called our ability to widen this gap ‘being proactive.’ It is the first habit of a highly effective person to cultivate an awareness that s/he is in control. To coin a phrase, life is what you make it.
Lesson #2: Everything Changes
“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.”
I keep a sign posted over my desk at work. It reads ‘this too will pass.’ It is a reminder to me that, whatever I am experiencing in life, it will disappear and be replaced with something else. Only one thing is certain – everything changes. People who know this and tap into the natural course of change can be very successful. Let’s take one area as an example – the stock market. People who bought stock after the dot com crash, knowing that the market would rebound after such a dramatic fall, reaped enormous rewards. Those who sold when prices had become stupidly inflated and wildly disconnected from earnings, knowing that the market couldn’t keep on rising forever, also did well.
Clinging on to the way things were can be a source of great misery. The past is gone and it’s never coming back; the present is already changing. So why complain that things used to be better? There are opportunities if only we can see that change is coming.
Lesson #3: Live a Real Life
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
I recently picked up a copy of Felix Dennis’ book ‘How to Get Rich’ while waiting for a flight recently. It’s a great read – unlikely to make you rich I suspect, but full of wonderful observations. In the first chapter, Dennis (who is ‘one of the richest self-made men in Britain, according to the back sleeve of the book) tells us that one of the main obstacles to being rich is comfort – a regular paycheck, a pension, a nice title, stock options. In other words, people don’t want to risk losing what they have. In other words, they are afraid. They are not living the life they want because they are scared they might lose more than they gain.
In the British comedy ‘The Office,’ Tim is set to leave his dead end job and go to university when he is given a small promotion. This persuades his to stay at work because although, as he puts it, he has ‘rolled a three and could very well roll a six,’ going to university might not work out – he might end up ‘rolling a one.’
Taking risks is no easy thing, but when we come to the end of it all, shall we regret that we stayed too much in our comfort zone?
Lesson #4: Be Grateful
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
Marcus clearly understood that gratitude is an important commodity to possess. We take so many things for granted, and only when we lose them do we stop to think just how important they were to us. If you cannot sleep because you have stomach ache or you have injured yourself, you will quickly become grateful for a good night’s sleep!
Every day is a gift, and there are so many, many things to be happy about. We all have problems and we all suffer lack and privation, but why not focus on the good things we have? If you can read this, then you have had an education and you are probably rich enough to own a computer and pay for an Internet connection. Make a list of things you can be grateful for – you might be amazed at how long it is!
Lesson #5: Be Detached
“Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.”
Felix Dennis, in his book ‘How to Get Rich,’ speaks plainly about the real meaning of wealth. It is nothing, he says. It isn’t real. Getting rich, he writes, is just a game. If we take the pursuit of wealth (or anything else, for that matter) too seriously, we are likely to fail. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘Plunge into the heat of battle, and keep your heart at the lotus feet of the Lord.’ He is saying, I think, that the battle of life is a game – we must play it with all our heart, but we must not be attached to the outcome. In this detached state, we can be ready and open to receive wealth or success. We can pursue these things with energy and passion, but if we cling to them, or pursue them as something of importance, they are likely to elude us.
Lao Tze, who lived seven hundred years before Marcus Aurelius, wrote
“Those who take hold of the world and act on it
Never, I notice, succeed.
The world is a mysterious instrument,
Not made to be handled.”
It seems that Marcus understood this paradox.
Lesson #6: All Is Well
“Everything is unfolding as it must, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.”
In 1373, Julian of Norwich was suffering from a severe illness. Believing she was near death, she had a series of visions. In one of them, Jesus appeared to her and said, ‘All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.’
The idea that things are unfolding as they should is a common theme in the mystical traditions of the world. Anthony de Mello, in his wonderful book ‘Awareness,’ writes ‘When you awaken, when you understand, when you see, the world becomes right…You’ll never explain it… Life is a mystery, which means your thinking mind cannot make sense out of it.’
The world looks like a big mess to me, but if we take Marcus’ advice, sit quietly, abandon our opinions, and simply observe, then perhaps we shall indeed see that ‘all is well.’
Marcus Aurelius
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
this is soooo sweet!!!
Last Updated: Friday 13 July 2001 TOP STORIES
Mother duck's 'bird brain' saves ducklings
She grabs police officer by pant leg to lead him to her brood trapped under grate
Nicholas Read Vancouver Sun
Ray Peterson, Special to the Sun / Mother duck shows police officer where her ducklings fell through a grate into a sewer underneath the Granville Street Bridge.
Don't mention "bird brains" to Ray Petersen, because after what happened this week, he won't hear a word of it.
Petersen, a community police officer for Granville Downtown South, was walking in the 1500-block Granville Street (directly under the Granville Bridge) Wednesday morning when a duck came up and grabbed him by the pant leg. Then it started waddling around him and quacking.
"I thought it was a bit goofy, so I shoved it away," Petersen said in an interview.
But the duck, a female (he thinks it was a mallard), wasn't about to give up that easily. Making sure she still had Petersen's eye, she waddled up the road about 20 metres and lay on a storm sewer grate.
Petersen watched and thought nothing of it.
"But when I started walking again, she did the same thing. She ran around and grabbed me again."
It became obvious to him then that something was up.
So when she waddled off to the sewer grate a second time, Petersen decided to follow.
"I went up to where the duck was lying and saw eight little babies in the water below. They had fallen down between the grates."
So Petersen took action. He phoned police Sergeant Randy Kellens, who arrived at the scene and, in turn, got in touch with two more constables.
"When they came down, the duck ran around them as well, quacking. Then she lay down on the grate," Petersen said.
While Kellens looked over into the grate, the duck sat on the curb and watched.
Then the two constables, John Schilling and Allison Hill, marshalled a tow truck that lifted the grate out of position, allowing the eight ducklings to be rescued one by one with a vegetable strainer.
"While we were doing this, the mother duck just lay there and watched," Petersen says.
Once the ducklings were safe, however, she set about marching them down to False Creek, where they jumped into the water.
Kellens followed them to make sure they were all right, but elected to remain on shore.
The experience has changed Petersen's mind about ducks. He thinks they're a lot smarter than he used to.
And while he never ate duck before, he says he wouldn't dream of it now.
Vancouver Sun - Top Stories
Mother duck's 'bird brain' saves ducklings
She grabs police officer by pant leg to lead him to her brood trapped under grate
Nicholas Read Vancouver Sun
Ray Peterson, Special to the Sun / Mother duck shows police officer where her ducklings fell through a grate into a sewer underneath the Granville Street Bridge.
Don't mention "bird brains" to Ray Petersen, because after what happened this week, he won't hear a word of it.
Petersen, a community police officer for Granville Downtown South, was walking in the 1500-block Granville Street (directly under the Granville Bridge) Wednesday morning when a duck came up and grabbed him by the pant leg. Then it started waddling around him and quacking.
"I thought it was a bit goofy, so I shoved it away," Petersen said in an interview.
But the duck, a female (he thinks it was a mallard), wasn't about to give up that easily. Making sure she still had Petersen's eye, she waddled up the road about 20 metres and lay on a storm sewer grate.
Petersen watched and thought nothing of it.
"But when I started walking again, she did the same thing. She ran around and grabbed me again."
It became obvious to him then that something was up.
So when she waddled off to the sewer grate a second time, Petersen decided to follow.
"I went up to where the duck was lying and saw eight little babies in the water below. They had fallen down between the grates."
So Petersen took action. He phoned police Sergeant Randy Kellens, who arrived at the scene and, in turn, got in touch with two more constables.
"When they came down, the duck ran around them as well, quacking. Then she lay down on the grate," Petersen said.
While Kellens looked over into the grate, the duck sat on the curb and watched.
Then the two constables, John Schilling and Allison Hill, marshalled a tow truck that lifted the grate out of position, allowing the eight ducklings to be rescued one by one with a vegetable strainer.
"While we were doing this, the mother duck just lay there and watched," Petersen says.
Once the ducklings were safe, however, she set about marching them down to False Creek, where they jumped into the water.
Kellens followed them to make sure they were all right, but elected to remain on shore.
The experience has changed Petersen's mind about ducks. He thinks they're a lot smarter than he used to.
And while he never ate duck before, he says he wouldn't dream of it now.
Vancouver Sun - Top Stories
Friday, June 20, 2008
A Brief Essay on Love
i love this for some reason.
there are pics of "family" mixed in. its neat seeing old pics from back then....
A Brief Essay on Love
there are pics of "family" mixed in. its neat seeing old pics from back then....
A Brief Essay on Love
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Too Funny!
hahaha this is great!
Story archives - story #2215
What are the odds?
I knew God had a sense of humor when I hesitantly answered the ringing K-Mart payphone, only to hear my best friend, who had misdialed my home phone number, on the other end.
One Sentence archive - story #2215
Story archives - story #2215
What are the odds?
I knew God had a sense of humor when I hesitantly answered the ringing K-Mart payphone, only to hear my best friend, who had misdialed my home phone number, on the other end.
One Sentence archive - story #2215
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Los Cuatro Ojos � SCHOOL — 1957 vs. 2007
Los Cuatro Ojos � SCHOOL — 1957 vs. 2007
SCHOOL — 1957 vs. 2007
Posted on June 1st, 2008 by TheFourEyes
Scenario #1: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark… Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
Scenario #2: Jeffrey won’t be still in class, disrupts other students.
1957 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal… Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin… Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADHD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.
Scenario #3: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse… Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang… State psychologist tells Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison… Billy’s Mom has affair with psychologist.
Scenario #4: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations… Car searched for drugs and weapons.
Scenario #5: Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro’s English teacher… English banned from core curriculum… Pedro given diploma anyway… but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.
Scenario #6: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007 - ATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home… computers confiscated. Johnny’s Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
Scenario #7: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary… Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison… Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.
SCHOOL — 1957 vs. 2007
Posted on June 1st, 2008 by TheFourEyes
Scenario #1: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark… Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
Scenario #2: Jeffrey won’t be still in class, disrupts other students.
1957 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal… Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin… Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADHD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.
Scenario #3: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse… Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang… State psychologist tells Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison… Billy’s Mom has affair with psychologist.
Scenario #4: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations… Car searched for drugs and weapons.
Scenario #5: Pedro fails high school English.
1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro’s English teacher… English banned from core curriculum… Pedro given diploma anyway… but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.
Scenario #6: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007 - ATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home… computers confiscated. Johnny’s Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.
Scenario #7: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary… Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison… Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.
The Best Things In Life
The Best Things In Life
THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE
Falling in love. Laughing so hard your face hurts. A hot shower. A special glance.
No line-up at the supermarket cash. Getting mail. A thick chocolate milkshake.
Taking a drive along a scenic road. Hearing your favorite song on the radio. Giggling.
A long distance phone call. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside. A nice long bubble bath.
Hot towels fresh out of the dryer. Laughing at an inside joke. Two hours at the beach.
Finding the sweater you’ve been wanting is now on sale for half price. A good conversation.
Finding a $20 bill in the pocket of your coat from last winter. Laughing at yourself.
Midnight phone calls that last for hours. Running through sprinklers. Friends.
Laughing for absolutely no reason at all. Having someone tell you that you’re beautiful.
Falling in love for the first time. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.
Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep. Your first kiss. Sweet dreams.
Playing with a puppy. Making new friends or spending time with old ones. Hot chocolate.
Late night talks with your roommate. Swinging on swings. Road trips with friends. Someone playing with your hair. Going to a really good concert. Making chocolate chip cookies.
Cuddling up on a couch to watch a movie with someone you love. Watching the sunset.
Wrapping presents under the Christmas tree while eating cookies and drinking eggnog.
Hugging the person you love. Watching the sunrise. Making eye contact with a cute stranger.
Song lyrics printed inside your new CD so you can sing along without feeling stupid.
Watching the expression on someone’s face as they open a much-desired present from you.
Getting out of bed every morning and thanking God for another beautiful day.
Remembering that many people will walk in and out of your life,
but only true friends will leave a footprint in your heart . . .
THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE
Falling in love. Laughing so hard your face hurts. A hot shower. A special glance.
No line-up at the supermarket cash. Getting mail. A thick chocolate milkshake.
Taking a drive along a scenic road. Hearing your favorite song on the radio. Giggling.
A long distance phone call. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside. A nice long bubble bath.
Hot towels fresh out of the dryer. Laughing at an inside joke. Two hours at the beach.
Finding the sweater you’ve been wanting is now on sale for half price. A good conversation.
Finding a $20 bill in the pocket of your coat from last winter. Laughing at yourself.
Midnight phone calls that last for hours. Running through sprinklers. Friends.
Laughing for absolutely no reason at all. Having someone tell you that you’re beautiful.
Falling in love for the first time. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.
Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep. Your first kiss. Sweet dreams.
Playing with a puppy. Making new friends or spending time with old ones. Hot chocolate.
Late night talks with your roommate. Swinging on swings. Road trips with friends. Someone playing with your hair. Going to a really good concert. Making chocolate chip cookies.
Cuddling up on a couch to watch a movie with someone you love. Watching the sunset.
Wrapping presents under the Christmas tree while eating cookies and drinking eggnog.
Hugging the person you love. Watching the sunrise. Making eye contact with a cute stranger.
Song lyrics printed inside your new CD so you can sing along without feeling stupid.
Watching the expression on someone’s face as they open a much-desired present from you.
Getting out of bed every morning and thanking God for another beautiful day.
Remembering that many people will walk in and out of your life,
but only true friends will leave a footprint in your heart . . .
Winners and Losers
Winners and Losers
Winners and Losers
The Winner is always a part of the answer;
The Loser is always a part of the problem.
The Winner always has a program;
The Loser always has an excuse.
The Winner says, "Let me do it for you.";
The Loser says, "That's not my job."
The Winner sees an answer for every problem;
The Loser sees a problem in every answer.
The Winner sees a green near every sand trap;
The Loser sees two or three sand traps near every green.
The Winner says, "It may be difficult but it's possible."
The Loser says, "It may be possible but it's too difficult."
You can make the choice !
CHOOSE TO BE A WINNER !
Winners and Losers
The Winner is always a part of the answer;
The Loser is always a part of the problem.
The Winner always has a program;
The Loser always has an excuse.
The Winner says, "Let me do it for you.";
The Loser says, "That's not my job."
The Winner sees an answer for every problem;
The Loser sees a problem in every answer.
The Winner sees a green near every sand trap;
The Loser sees two or three sand traps near every green.
The Winner says, "It may be difficult but it's possible."
The Loser says, "It may be possible but it's too difficult."
You can make the choice !
CHOOSE TO BE A WINNER !
If I Knew
If I Knew
If I knew
If I knew it would be the last time that I’d see you fall asleep
I would tuck you in more tightly and pray the Lord your soul to keep.
If I knew it would be the last time that I’d see you walk out the door,
I would hug you and kiss you and call you back for one more.
If I knew it would be the last time I heard your name lifted up in praise,
I would video tape each action and word, so I could play it back for days.
If I knew it would be the last time to spare an extra minute or two,
I’d stop and say "I love you", instead of assuming that you know I do.
If I knew it would be the last time I would be there to share your day . . . .
Well, I’m sure you’ll have many more, so I’ll let this one slip away.
For surely there is tomorrow to make up for an oversight,
and we’ll always get a second chance to make everything all right.
There will be another chance to say our "I love you’s,"
and certainly there’s another chance to say our "Anything I can do"’s.
But just in case I might be wrong, and today is all I get,
I’d like to say how much I love you.
I hope to never forget
That tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike,
and today might be your last chance to hold your loved one tight.
So if you’re waiting for tomorrow, why not do it all today?
For if tomorrow never comes, you will surely regret the day
that you didn’t take the extra time for a smile or hug or kiss.
And were too busy to grant someone what turned out to be their last wish.
So hold your loved ones close today and whisper in their ear.
Tell them how much you love them and that you’ll always hold them dear.
Take the time to say "I’m sorry", "Please forgive me", "Thank you" or "It’s OK",
and if tomorrow never comes, you’ll have no regrets about today.
Apologize and start anew and tell the one who loves you
that you really love them too
If I knew
If I knew it would be the last time that I’d see you fall asleep
I would tuck you in more tightly and pray the Lord your soul to keep.
If I knew it would be the last time that I’d see you walk out the door,
I would hug you and kiss you and call you back for one more.
If I knew it would be the last time I heard your name lifted up in praise,
I would video tape each action and word, so I could play it back for days.
If I knew it would be the last time to spare an extra minute or two,
I’d stop and say "I love you", instead of assuming that you know I do.
If I knew it would be the last time I would be there to share your day . . . .
Well, I’m sure you’ll have many more, so I’ll let this one slip away.
For surely there is tomorrow to make up for an oversight,
and we’ll always get a second chance to make everything all right.
There will be another chance to say our "I love you’s,"
and certainly there’s another chance to say our "Anything I can do"’s.
But just in case I might be wrong, and today is all I get,
I’d like to say how much I love you.
I hope to never forget
That tomorrow is not promised to anyone, young or old alike,
and today might be your last chance to hold your loved one tight.
So if you’re waiting for tomorrow, why not do it all today?
For if tomorrow never comes, you will surely regret the day
that you didn’t take the extra time for a smile or hug or kiss.
And were too busy to grant someone what turned out to be their last wish.
So hold your loved ones close today and whisper in their ear.
Tell them how much you love them and that you’ll always hold them dear.
Take the time to say "I’m sorry", "Please forgive me", "Thank you" or "It’s OK",
and if tomorrow never comes, you’ll have no regrets about today.
Apologize and start anew and tell the one who loves you
that you really love them too
Ananova - Pensioner destroys flats to kill ants
I'm almost to this point. I hate ants.
Ananova - Pensioner destroys flats to kill ants: "Pensioner destroys flats to kill ants
A Polish pensioner destroyed an entire block of flats when he poured insecticide down a ventilation shaft after being driven potty by ants.
Marcin Bartosz, 74, used gallons of insecticide but when it seemed to have no effect on the insects he threw a burning towel after it.
The explosion left the block of flats in Lublin in eastern Poland in ruins and Bartosz in hospital with third degree burns.
Miraculously, none of his neighbours was injured in the accident."
Ananova - Pensioner destroys flats to kill ants: "Pensioner destroys flats to kill ants
A Polish pensioner destroyed an entire block of flats when he poured insecticide down a ventilation shaft after being driven potty by ants.
Marcin Bartosz, 74, used gallons of insecticide but when it seemed to have no effect on the insects he threw a burning towel after it.
The explosion left the block of flats in Lublin in eastern Poland in ruins and Bartosz in hospital with third degree burns.
Miraculously, none of his neighbours was injured in the accident."
Guitar Beginner .co.uk - Tabs for learning guitar playing
Guitar Beginner .co.uk - Tabs for learning guitar playing
this is pretty cool. lots of stuff to learn on your GUITAR
this is pretty cool. lots of stuff to learn on your GUITAR
Friday, June 13, 2008
Lessons for LIFE
Take into account that great love and great achievements involve
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involvegreat risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s: Respect for self, respect for others, responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other = exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up
in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involvegreat risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three R’s: Respect for self, respect for others, responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other = exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up
in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
Is Your Jar Full?
Is Your Jar Full?
Is Your Jar Full?
When things in your life seem almost to much to handle, when 24 hours in a
day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar......and the beer.
A Professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front
of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and
empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then
asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
So the Professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the
jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas
between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was
full. They agreed it was.
The Professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of
course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar
was full. The students responded with an unanimous "Yes."
The Professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty
space between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the Professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to
recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things - your family, your children, your
health, your friends, your favorite passions - things that if everything
else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house,
your car. The sand is everything else - the small stuff."
"If you put the sand into the jar first", he continued, "there is no room
for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all
your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the
things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are
critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get
medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There
will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal. Take care of
the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities.
The rest is just sand."
When he had finished, there was a profound silence. Then one of the
students raised her hand and with a puzzled expression, inquired what the
beer represented.
The Professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no
matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of
beers."
Is Your Jar Full?
When things in your life seem almost to much to handle, when 24 hours in a
day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar......and the beer.
A Professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front
of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and
empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then
asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
So the Professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the
jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas
between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was
full. They agreed it was.
The Professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of
course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar
was full. The students responded with an unanimous "Yes."
The Professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty
space between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the Professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to
recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things - your family, your children, your
health, your friends, your favorite passions - things that if everything
else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house,
your car. The sand is everything else - the small stuff."
"If you put the sand into the jar first", he continued, "there is no room
for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all
your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the
things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are
critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get
medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There
will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal. Take care of
the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities.
The rest is just sand."
When he had finished, there was a profound silence. Then one of the
students raised her hand and with a puzzled expression, inquired what the
beer represented.
The Professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no
matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of
beers."
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Interesting Things To Know 1
INTERESTING THINGS TO KNOW
1. Budweiser beer conditions the hair
2. Pam cooking spray will dry finger nail polish
3. Cool whip will condition your hair in 15 minutes
4. Mayonnaise will KILL LICE, it will also condition your hair
5. Elmer's Glue - paint on your face, allow it to dry, peel off and see the dead skin and blackheads if any
6. Shiny Hair - use brewed Lipton Tea
7. Sunburn - empty a large jar of Nestea into your bath water
8. Minor burn - Colgate or Crest toothpaste
9. Burn your tongue? Put sugar on it!
10. Arthritis? WD-40 Spray and rub in, kill insect stings too
11. Bee stings - meat tenderizer
12. Chigger bite - Preparation H
13. Puffy eyes - Preparation H
14. Paper cut - crazy glue or chap stick (glue is used instead of sutures at most hospitals)
15. Stinky feet - Jello!
16. Athletes feet - cornstarch
17. Fungus on toenails or fingernails - Vicks vapor rub
18. Kool aid to clean dishwasher pipes. Just put in the detergent section and run a cycle, it will also clean a toilet. (Wow, and we drink this stuff)
19. Kool Aid can be used as a dye in paint also Kool Aid in Dannon plain yogurt as a finger paint, your kids will love it and it won't hurt them if they eat it!
20. Peanut butter - will get scratches out of CD's! Wipe off with a coffee filter paper
21. Sticking bicycle chain - Pam no-stick cooking spray
22. Pam will also remove paint, and grease from your hands! Keep a can in your garage for your hubby
23. Peanut butter will remove ink from the face of dolls
24. When the doll clothes are hard to put on, sprinkle with corn starch and watch them slide on
25. Heavy dandruff - pour on the vinegar!
26. Body paint - Crisco mixed with food coloring. Heat the Crisco in the microwave, pour in to an empty film container and mix with the food color of your choice!
27. Tie Dye T-shirt - mix a solution of Kool Aid in a container, tie a rubber band around a section of the T-shirt and soak
28. Preserving a newspaper clipping - large bottle of club soda and cup of milk of magnesia, soak for 20 min. and let dry, will last f or many years!
29. A Slinky will hold toast and CD's!
30. To keep goggles and glasses from fogging, coat with Colgate toothpaste
31. Wine stains, pour on the Morton salt and watch it absorb into the salt.
32. To remove wax - Take a paper towel and iron it over the wax stain, it will absorb into the towel.
33. Remove labels off glassware etc. rub with Peanut butter!
34. Baked on food - fill container with water, get a Bounce paper softener and the static from the Bounce towel will cause the baked on food to adhere to it. Soak overnight. Also; you can use 2 Efferdent tablets, soak overnight!
35. Crayon on the wall - Colgate toothpaste and brush it!
36. Dirty grout - Listerine
37. Stains on clothes - Colgate
38. Grass stains - Karo Syrup
39. Grease Stains - Coca Cola, it will also remove grease stains from the driveway overnight. We know it will take corrosion from car batteries!
40. Fleas in your carpet? 20 Mule Team Borax- sprinkle and let stand for 24 hours. Maybe this will work if you get them back again.
41. To keep FRESH FLOWERS longer Add a little Clorox, or 2 Bayer aspirin, or just use 7-up instead of water.
42. When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you "squeeze" for freshness or softness? Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week? Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are: Monday = Blue, Tuesday = Green, Thursday = Red, Friday = White and Saturday = Yellow. So if today was Thursday, you would want red twist tie; not white which is Fridays (almost a week old)! The colors go alphabetically by color Blue- Green - Red - White - Yellow, Monday through Saturday. Very easy to remember. I thought this was interesting. I looked in the grocery store and the bread wrappers DO have different twist ties, and even the ones with the plastic clips have different colors. You learn something new everyday! Enjoy fresh bread when you buy bread with the right color on the day you are shopping.
Interesting Things To Know 1
1. Budweiser beer conditions the hair
2. Pam cooking spray will dry finger nail polish
3. Cool whip will condition your hair in 15 minutes
4. Mayonnaise will KILL LICE, it will also condition your hair
5. Elmer's Glue - paint on your face, allow it to dry, peel off and see the dead skin and blackheads if any
6. Shiny Hair - use brewed Lipton Tea
7. Sunburn - empty a large jar of Nestea into your bath water
8. Minor burn - Colgate or Crest toothpaste
9. Burn your tongue? Put sugar on it!
10. Arthritis? WD-40 Spray and rub in, kill insect stings too
11. Bee stings - meat tenderizer
12. Chigger bite - Preparation H
13. Puffy eyes - Preparation H
14. Paper cut - crazy glue or chap stick (glue is used instead of sutures at most hospitals)
15. Stinky feet - Jello!
16. Athletes feet - cornstarch
17. Fungus on toenails or fingernails - Vicks vapor rub
18. Kool aid to clean dishwasher pipes. Just put in the detergent section and run a cycle, it will also clean a toilet. (Wow, and we drink this stuff)
19. Kool Aid can be used as a dye in paint also Kool Aid in Dannon plain yogurt as a finger paint, your kids will love it and it won't hurt them if they eat it!
20. Peanut butter - will get scratches out of CD's! Wipe off with a coffee filter paper
21. Sticking bicycle chain - Pam no-stick cooking spray
22. Pam will also remove paint, and grease from your hands! Keep a can in your garage for your hubby
23. Peanut butter will remove ink from the face of dolls
24. When the doll clothes are hard to put on, sprinkle with corn starch and watch them slide on
25. Heavy dandruff - pour on the vinegar!
26. Body paint - Crisco mixed with food coloring. Heat the Crisco in the microwave, pour in to an empty film container and mix with the food color of your choice!
27. Tie Dye T-shirt - mix a solution of Kool Aid in a container, tie a rubber band around a section of the T-shirt and soak
28. Preserving a newspaper clipping - large bottle of club soda and cup of milk of magnesia, soak for 20 min. and let dry, will last f or many years!
29. A Slinky will hold toast and CD's!
30. To keep goggles and glasses from fogging, coat with Colgate toothpaste
31. Wine stains, pour on the Morton salt and watch it absorb into the salt.
32. To remove wax - Take a paper towel and iron it over the wax stain, it will absorb into the towel.
33. Remove labels off glassware etc. rub with Peanut butter!
34. Baked on food - fill container with water, get a Bounce paper softener and the static from the Bounce towel will cause the baked on food to adhere to it. Soak overnight. Also; you can use 2 Efferdent tablets, soak overnight!
35. Crayon on the wall - Colgate toothpaste and brush it!
36. Dirty grout - Listerine
37. Stains on clothes - Colgate
38. Grass stains - Karo Syrup
39. Grease Stains - Coca Cola, it will also remove grease stains from the driveway overnight. We know it will take corrosion from car batteries!
40. Fleas in your carpet? 20 Mule Team Borax- sprinkle and let stand for 24 hours. Maybe this will work if you get them back again.
41. To keep FRESH FLOWERS longer Add a little Clorox, or 2 Bayer aspirin, or just use 7-up instead of water.
42. When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you "squeeze" for freshness or softness? Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week? Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are: Monday = Blue, Tuesday = Green, Thursday = Red, Friday = White and Saturday = Yellow. So if today was Thursday, you would want red twist tie; not white which is Fridays (almost a week old)! The colors go alphabetically by color Blue- Green - Red - White - Yellow, Monday through Saturday. Very easy to remember. I thought this was interesting. I looked in the grocery store and the bread wrappers DO have different twist ties, and even the ones with the plastic clips have different colors. You learn something new everyday! Enjoy fresh bread when you buy bread with the right color on the day you are shopping.
Interesting Things To Know 1
Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes � Cancun, Oahu, Same Difference
Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes � Cancun, Oahu, Same Difference: "Cancun, Oahu, Same Difference
Liquor Store | Honolulu, HI, USA
(Standing in line behind a tourist, while she is getting rung up.)
Cashier: “Aloha, how are you today?”
Tourist: “Oh, I’m sorry I don’t speak Spanish. Could you talk in English please?”
Cashier: “Hello, how are you today?”
Tourist: “Fine, we just flew here from America today.”
(cashier rings up the tourist’s few items.)
Cashier: “That will be twenty five dollars and eighty five cents.”
Tourist: “Do you take American money here? I only have American money, I have not been able to get to the currency exchange yet.”
Cashier: “Ma’am, we are in the United States, we take dollars here.”
Tourist: “Oh really? You take this money?” *holds up her $20 bill*
Cashier: “Yes, ma’am those are dollars, and being a US state we do accept those.”
Tourist: “Well that’s very nice of you to accept foreign money.”
Cashier: *puzzled* “Mahalo, have a great day!”
Tourist: *under her breath* “I told her I didn’t speak Spanish!”"
Liquor Store | Honolulu, HI, USA
(Standing in line behind a tourist, while she is getting rung up.)
Cashier: “Aloha, how are you today?”
Tourist: “Oh, I’m sorry I don’t speak Spanish. Could you talk in English please?”
Cashier: “Hello, how are you today?”
Tourist: “Fine, we just flew here from America today.”
(cashier rings up the tourist’s few items.)
Cashier: “That will be twenty five dollars and eighty five cents.”
Tourist: “Do you take American money here? I only have American money, I have not been able to get to the currency exchange yet.”
Cashier: “Ma’am, we are in the United States, we take dollars here.”
Tourist: “Oh really? You take this money?” *holds up her $20 bill*
Cashier: “Yes, ma’am those are dollars, and being a US state we do accept those.”
Tourist: “Well that’s very nice of you to accept foreign money.”
Cashier: *puzzled* “Mahalo, have a great day!”
Tourist: *under her breath* “I told her I didn’t speak Spanish!”"
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