Feel Good

Welcome to the White House Mr. Obama, soon to be President Obama. I for one am very happy to see this moment arrive and I thank you for serving us as I know you will–in giving us your best in what you believe is our best interests. That’s all we can ask of you.

As for the rest of us–Barack Obama won his upcoming presidency, a presidency to which the whole world looks with baited breath, on a message comprised of two words:

Hope & Change

The challenge for the coming year, the call to action, now falls to us–as citizens, as family and household members, as lovers and friends, as human beings–is to find ways to harness hope and enact change in our own lives.

Can we heed this call as more than just a rally cry? Can we heed it as an oath? A contract to give no less than we expect of Mr. Obama these coming 4 (and dare I hope, years?

This can be a transformative period for each of us as individuals, for America, and for the world. But only if we each take the courageous responsibility to keep the candle of hope lit and dedicate our days and nights to the kind of change our children can be proud of.

Happy New Year one and all.

The list started last week of Classic Feel Good Songs for helping you pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off, and shake - shake - shake your booty. In fact, that sounds like a perfect track to start us off, again in no particular order:

11.  “Shake Your Booty” - KC & the Sunshine Band

12. “Blue Skies” - Irving Berlin

13. “Greatest Love of All” - Whitney Houston

14. “We Are the World” - Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie (songwriters)/USA for Africa (performers)

15.”All Night Long” - Lionel Richie

16.”Rhythm of the Night” - DeBarge

17. “Smile” - Nat King Cole

18. “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” - McFadden & Whitehead

19. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” -Rodgers & Hammerstein (songwriters)/Elvis Presley (performer)

20. “Holiday” - Madonna

Add these 10 Classic Feel Good Songs to your iPod. In fact, why not start a Feel Good Playlist beginning with these 10 songs and the first 10 from last week? Then every day could be a little more of a holiday (or at least have a little more holiday in it).

10 More Classic Feel Good Songs: 21-30 coming next Friday.

I always love coming across other websites whose chief aim is to uplift which is why I am elated to have found JustCause .

The stated mission of Just Cause is to:

“shine a bright light on individuals, corporations and the change agents who are working for the greater good.”

Read further and you see a picture forming of a shared commitment to:

charity and community
making a difference
inspiring impassioned action

JustCause accomplishes this in many ways, including:

• a national print magazine
• an interactive online community site
• a community events board
• and, from the impression I’m getting, whatever else participants like you and I make it

A pleasurable and enlightening highlight of the JustCause site is its several blogs on an impressive variety of themes:

• Arts
• Civic
• Education
• Environment
• Health
• International

But for those who want to do more than just read, those who are ready to take action, JustCause hosts what it aptly calls “Causes”.

These are groups of JustCause members who come together to work on a common goal for positive change in some arena – geographical, medical, artistic, educational, environmental, political…

Causes get their own events board and blog and are highlighted prominently throughout the site.

Next to that, my next observation might seem incidental, but on the contrary I think it can’t be overstated: the JustCause site is clean and attractive and very well put together.

If you browse the web as frequently as I do (and you very well might) then you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that many an ingenious concept went to waste due to lousy web design.

The JustCause site is as pristine and humble as its mission.

Currently still in “beta” mode, in my opinion JustCause has the potential to become the seminal web 2.0 community for charitable work.

And I, for one, want to be a part of it. So of course, I just joined.

Take Note:

the URL for JustCause is JustCauseIt.com

Remember that “it” at the end

or you’ll wind up somewhere else

Best idea: Click the above link and Bookmark the page right away!

Reach for the stars!

It’s every generation’s charge to the next one.

You can be anything you want; do whatever you choose.

All you have to do is believe in yourself and follow your dreams!

But how often do we follow our own advice? And do we really believe it ourselves?

Do we practice what we preach? Or are we just whistling in the wind, hoping something will stick? Always looking to our children to do what we couldn’t. To do it – Life - better than we did?

Because we’re not dead yet! And as long as we’re alive, there’s still time to live out your dreams.

So is the message of The Astronaut Farmer, a 2006 movie starring Tommy Lee Jones and Virginia Madsen that I find myself fortunate to have rented on DVD the other night.

In it, Tommy Lee Jones players Charles Farmer, a man who had to give up his lifelong dream of flying into outer space in order to take care of his family. (What a choice!)

So what does he do about it? He builds a rocket – a real rocket (he was an engineer, after all) – in his barn. Only his family (and even then with reservation) believes the thing will actually fly, much less carry him safely into space and back to Earth.

It’s made him the talk of the town – and not in an admirable way.

What’s more, the closer he gets to “take-off” the more the odds stack up against him.

I won’t delve any further into the plot other than to tell you that I’m reviewing this movie in the Feel Good blog for a reason.

The acting was superb (including a killer surprise cameo I won’t spoil), the direction more than adequate. The script had a few minor logistical loopholes, but who really cares? This movie isn’t about realism.

It’s about the power of dreams, and what can happen when you hold fast to them in the face of all obstacles – from naysayers to (alleged) cold, hard facts.

And for that, this story is one I’ll repeatedly recall any time someone tries to discourage me from claiming my destiny: especially me!

Last week a 4-year-old victim of the recent California wildfires told a television news reporter that all his toys burned up when his house burned down.

Well, that’s all it took for his neighbors to come flooding out of their homes the very next day, toys and children’s clothes and books in hand, to help little Andrew Stanley recover from his losses.

In most cases, it wasn’t even the neighborhood parents who initiated the generous act, but their own young children who found themselves heartbroken to see the suffering of another child just like them who suddenly found all his treasured belongings wiped out in one fell swoop.

Even kids from outside his Anaheim Hills community, kids Andrew didn’t even know, traveled from far and wide after seeing that story on TV, their own personal treasures in hand, inspired to give them up in order to help another child just like them to restore some of his fire-damaged happiness.

If anybody doubts that acts of kindness still exist in this crazy world of ours, here is proof-positive that a selfless love of strangers is still alive and well. And coming from the youngest members of our community.

If you let go, something will happen.
Fear is always anticipation of the unknown.
Most human energy flow problems reate to
the inability to relax.
Fear of letting go.
If you let go, something will happen.
Fear of the unknown.
Ration mind::wants to make a deal::
first tell me what will happen,
and then I’ll let go.
F**k you.
No one knowns what’s going to happen.
Ever.
The future – next moment – is unknowable – unknown.
Rational mind won’t believe that.
He is afraid to.

Paul Williams: Das Energi
We all hold on to so much, and all to our detriment.

From the belongings we amass, weighing us down, cluttering our lives, to the grudges we lug around with us everywhere we go - most of our lives are so filled with “stuff” it’s a wonder we have any room at all for anything new to come in.

Many health practitioners, holistic and otherwise, will tell you that the cause of so much physical illness and disease is our chronic “holding on” to things.

Your massage therapist may alert you to the areas in your body where energy is blocked, where you’re unwittingly holding back the free flow of Chi or life force.

Your chiropractor may point out to you the various spots where you’re literally, physically holding on – clenching your shoulders, tightening your neck, locking your knees. Indicating where the empty space between your joints has been compressed, keeping you tight, tensed, rigid, bound.

And your therapist may apprise you of the dangers of holding on to all those upsets from your past. An unhappy childhood. A failed marriage. A foolish decision. A loved one gone without you having the chance to say goodbye.

We spend so much of our lives holding on to the past and present that the future has no space to happen. But to change our lives, to better ourselves, to improve our outlook, to uplift our spirits – we need to keep moving forward, into the future. Nothing new can happen if we keep it all locked out.

And as Paul Williams points out in the above quote from his Bestselling book Das Energi, it’s usually some form of fear that keeps us this way. Stagnant. Frustrated. Sick and tired.

But the unknown is our friend. Giving up all that we “know” – our judgments, our blame, our disappointments, our regrets, our illnesses, our pain, even our beliefs about which we’re so darned certain – liberates us to let something new and different happen.

Once we understand – and trust – that the unknown is actually the infinite source of all possibility – and a loving, benevolent one at that – the place where the stuff of our dreams are made manifest, then we can freely, joyously, enthusiastically dive into that abundant and boundless wellspring of fulfillment. And drink. Time and time again.

How? By doing nothing more (or less) than letting go.

What have you got to lose?

Everything!

And isn’t that wonderful?

According to an article in the UK science and technology news magazine, The Register, the world’s largest web hosting company 1&1 Internet will build its next data center in an abandoned nuclear power facility.

The Manau, Germany facility, called “New MOX” was originally built near the end of the 1980’s to process fuel for use in nuclear reactors. If local protestors hadn’t gotten in closed down before it even opened, the facility would have been handling large amounts of dangerous toxic substances like plutonium and uranium.

Now there will be no risk of that ever happening, as 1&1 takes it over and makes it a green data center that, among other environmentally friendly innovations, will be energy efficient climate controls.

This after 1&1 just recently announced a partnership with the non-profit Bonneville Environmental Foundation to buy enough Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to cover 100% of its energy usage at its United States data center.

Why does triumph of victory feel so good?

In part because of a glorious function of the human brain that releases a neurotransmitter called Dopamine to “reward” us for achieving objectives we set for ourselves.

(Bear with me here. This is not going to be a dry science lesson, but rather a quick fix to feeling down that you can do pretty much anytime!)

Dopamine actually serves many functions in the human brain, but the one that interests us here involves the Pleasure Principle, or our natural inclination to seek out pleasure and avoid pain.

Unlike all those drugs that you have to ingest to feel good, dopamine is a feel good drug that’s perfectly legal, because it’s produced by your own brain! (which means it’s also FREE)

When you set a goal for yourself - be it something huge like getting into college or landing a raise at your job, or something simple like cleaning your room or finishing your homework - once that goal is reached, your brain is flooded with this neurochemical as a sort of reward-mechanism to motivate and encourage you to set and achieve more goals.

So how can you use this knowledge to make yourself feel good at will?

Simply set yourself an easily achievable goal -

and achieve it!

If you’re like me and you create To-Do lists all the time to keep yourself on track, then here’s a way you can maximize your efficiency and effectiveness in completing all the items on your list while enjoying the process of productivity more than ever before.

Just do the easiest tasks first.

Try organizing your list not in order of priority, but in order of ease. Start your day by clearing off the easiest items on your list, and with each completion your brain will get a nice little flood of Dopamine, making you feel good and accomplished, and inspiring you to press forward and complete more of your goals.

By the time you get to the more complex and involved tasks on your list (maybe the ones you’ve been avoiding or procrastinating for far too long) you’ll be so energized by this Dopamine effect that you’ll be ready and rarin’ to go!

That’s why scratching off items on a To-Do list (or highlighting them or checking them off - however you prefer to do it) feels so darned good!

Be warned, however - Dopamine can be addictive. So if you don’t want to get anywhere, do anything, or be the best You that you can be, then maybe this tip isn’t for you. Maybe wallowing in miserable laziness is the better option.

For me, though, I’m going to post this blog ASAP so I can get that next pleasurable rush of brain juice.

So says The Steve Miller Band and I wholeheartedly agree.

Like most of the country (and probably most of you reading this) Curry and I have come on some hard times lately. There’s a lot to be stressed about in the air, I think we can all agree (which is why I believe this blog is so needed, but I digress…)

We were both feeling particularly down about our situation and were completely worn out from discussing it to death. Emotional exhaustion best describes it, I think. (sound familiar?)

After we spent far too long stewing in our own mess, slumped in our respective seats staring off sullenly into space, Curry stood up and turned on some music: Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” as it so happened.

And out of nowhere, the two of us stood up, walked to the center of the lanai floor (lanai is a porch) and started dancing. The smiles on our faces came almost instantaneously as we flailed about. Before long, we couldn’t shake those smiles if we tried.

We only danced for that one song, but that’s all it took. Our spirits were lifted. We went on about our evening in much better moods, far more able to appreciate what we’ve got and relax a little about any imagined urgency we may have had. And last night, we both slept like babies.

So the next time you’re feeling down- or right now, perhaps, give it a try.

Get up and dance! 

You’ll be surprised how much better you’ll feel, almost instantly.

I don’t think anyone needs to be convinced that giving to charity feels good. But a lot of good that does us when we don’t have any money to give.

Fortunately, there’s is an unbelievably easy way to make charitable donations that won’t cost you a dime. And I’m not talking about volunteering. This isn’t a piece about giving of your time. It’s about giving away other people’s cold hard cash!

It all started in June of 1999 with The Hunger Site, a brilliant system in which advertisers would pay a certain amount of money or donate a certain amount food every time someone clicked on the button on The Hunger Site Homepage.

Best of all, people could click every day, once a day, and keep those donations coming. Since it first launched, The Hunger Site and its over 200 million visitors have donated over 300 million cups of staple food (like rice and such) to poverty-stricken communities around the world through Mercy Corps and Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest). Today over 22,000 people visit the site and click the donation button every day.

The Hunger Site was so successful that it soon fostered similar sites to support other charities.

The Breast Cancer Site

giving away: free mammograms

The Child Health Site

giving away: free child health care

The Literacy Site

giving away: free books to children

The Rainforest Site

helping to: protect the rainforests

The Animal Rescue Site

giving away: free food to rescued animals

There are so many ways you can use these sites to help support causes you care about without having to give up anything more than a mouse click, including:

1. Make one of these sites your homepage and click on it every day
2. Better yet, bookmark this post or make it your homepage and click one by one on each of them every day
3. Link to these sites from your own website
4. Forward this posting or use one of the aforementioned site’s easy tool to send emails to friend letting them know about this free and easy way to give.

 And here’s one more thing you can feel good about. All of these sites promise that:

 100% of sponsor money goes to charity.