Every word you utter to another human being has an effect, but you don't know it. If people begin to understand that change comes about as a result of a million tiny acts that seem totally insignificant, well then, they wouldn't hesitate to take those tiny acts.Howard Zinn ... Continue reading »
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Johann Hari: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
is to say to the addicts in my life that I want to deepen the connection with them, to say to them, I love you whether you're using or you're not. I love you, whatever state you're in, and if you need me, I'll come and sit with you because I love you and I don't want you to be alone or to feel alone.And I think the core of that message -- you're not alone, we love you -- has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts, socially, politically and individually. For 100 years now, we've been singing war songs about addicts. I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them ... Continue reading »
This Helps Me Get Perspective
Whenever I feel challenged and find myself in a situation where I'm only focussed inward I quickly become aware that I need to find perspective again. You know, to look at the outside world again and get some perspective. Perspective, to me, is that one ingredient that helps me stay in touch with the grander scheme of things. Of life, really. Perspective – of any kind – helps me become aware of what's really important to me again. It helps me focus on what I've got in front of me without feeling challenged If I really went for it, I could probably list a whole bunch of solutions of how I go ... Continue reading »
Stop Giving Just Honest Feedback
"I'm looking for honest feedback". As someone living in a world of (people working with) open-source software, I see the question above fly by many times a week. By open-sourcing your code, your suggestion, your solution, you are, in fact, looking for honest feedback. And that's a good thing. It's what the open-source community thrives on. I see a lot of people putting in good amount of their free time into writing proposals, suggesting implementations or ways to improve certain things. Sadly though, a lot of times those people end up feeling disappointed and turned down in what ... Continue reading »
Should I blog more?
I work with WordPress all day. I have been since late 2005. I started using WordPress for what it was supposed to do back in the day: blogging. The more I started discovering the possibilities WordPress gave me, in terms of earning my living with it, the less I started blogging. I'm guessing the decline in my blogging frequency started out as a preference to rather be working on building my business than randomly writing blog posts. But it could be I just got lazy and stopped bothering. Either way, I kinda stopped blogging. Not full stop, but very close. So, I didn't think I had to ... Continue reading »
I’m focusing and becoming more aware again
Back in 2004, I enrolled in an NLP course in Belgium led by the wonderful Paul Liekens. Learning to understand how we translate whatever our senses pick up and how language patterns get interpreted by our mind was, and still is, one of the most important things I've ever learned. It's something I use every single day. However, this post is not about NLP, it's about something else Paul taught me: meditation. We would have these long weekends of 4 to 5 days where every single day before we started the day, we would commence the day by doing meditation. Even though it felt very unnatural ... Continue reading »
Liberation of the human mind
Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.Emma Goldman ... Continue reading »
Awakened Man
I shared this on Facebook last night, but these kinds of messages deserve a larger crowd. I've been following Russell Brand for quite a few years now and love how he's inviting us to see the world for what it is ... not what the media wants us the believe it is.This is a compilation of interviews that, if you let it, invites you to think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bKQXmvdr8o ... Continue reading »