A World of Inspiration for Artful Living
All right, it’s that time again. If you’re going to make any New Year’s resolutions for 2011, today is the day!
Borrowing a few suggestions from my favorite goal-setting book, Your Best Year Yet by Jinny S. Ditzler, I’d like to suggest a 5-step plan that you complete before making even a single resolution for 2011. It won’t take that long, and I think you’ll find it very worthwhile: [Read more...]
"Phoenix" by Stanley Morrison
What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now.
Author Unknown
Talk about going out in a blaze of glory. That’s the phoenix. But it doesn’t end there. Not for this old bird… [Read more...]
Often it feels like an exercise in futility, a Sisyphean task, if you will (yep, another reference to Greek mythology!) I’m talking, of course, about New Year’s resolutions. Sometimes I’m tempted to just white-out the date on last year’s list and write in the new year because it all still applies—it feels as though I’ve accomplished exactly nothing!
So if we’re thinking about changing when we celebrate the New Year (as we did in Tuesday’s post), why not consider a few tweaks to how as well, at least with regard to the whole resolution issue? While perusing my (rather large) library of self help books, I came across an intriguing idea. And then I saw it (or a variation thereof) several more times, leading me to conclude that either these self help authors copy shamelessly from one another or this exercise really is effective. (In this case, I suspect both.)
Statue of the Goddess Demeter
It’s coming—you can feel it in the air. Already the evenings are cooler. It won’t be long before we’ll have to face those cold, gray winter mornings again. (Of course, this isn’t so much an issue for us southern Arizonans, but for those in less hospitable climes, let me just say, I still remember and I feel your pain…)
This time of year always brings with it a certain lethargy. You know how it goes, one minute you’re lying in the arms of Morpheus, snoring peacefully, and then the alarm goes off—again—and you hit the “snooze” button—again, roll over and pull the covers up over your head. Some days it takes an almost Herculean effort to finally rouse yourself, swing out of bed, and plant those nice warm tootsies on the cold, hard floor.
This is all Demeter’s fault, you know, at least according to Greek mythology. She’s the goddess of the harvest, the one who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth. And before she got mad and created “seasons,” it was always warm and sunny—an eternal spring, if you will.
In her defense, she was sorely provoked. In fact, she was acting out of the strongest love of all—the love of a mother for her child. Here’s what happened:
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