“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do you want to know how great things happen? Life achievements and big scary dreams? Buying a house, living a healthy lifestyle, making it to your 59th wedding anniversary (like my grandparents) or sticking to your intentions for 2010?
I’ll tell you how. One day at a time. Let me say it again: ONE. DAY. AT. A. TIME. Sure, tomorrow is a new year, but today is a new day. Make the most of it. Take a baby step toward a goal. Give a new habit one more chance to stick. Climb one step higher up the mountain even if you are afraid of heights.
Life gets too overwhelming for me when i think about committing to something like good health or a human or a house for 30+ years. I don’t know about you, but I find thoughts like that paralyzing, and an open invitation for my saboteur to swoop in and show me all the ways I’ll screw it up. So stop scaring yourself out of big things. You don’t have to do great things all at once, for the rest of eternity. You just have to give it your best shot on any given day. And that day is today.
“Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.”
—Chinese inscription cited by Thoreau in Walden
I’ll skip the “be here now” and “be present” cliches and just say this: whether it’s a New Years resolution, a big dream, or some other scary endeavor that leaves you feeling vulnerable, uncertain, and maybe even stupid – the only way you will make it is by trusting your gut and taking baby steps. One foot in front of the other. If something scares you, that just means the opportunity is big enough. And that’s a great thing.
Stress is caused by having regrets about the past or worrying about the future. Focus on today, and trust that just for today – you can honor yourself and what you really want in this life. And if you stumble? Get back up the next day and keep going. ONE. DAY. AT. A. TIME. Just do me one favor: please remember to laugh and love yourself along the way.
May 2010 bring you ALL a year filled with joy, love and laughter. Cheers!
***
If you are looking for books about how to be more present in everyday life, below are some of my favorites:
- Zen and the Art of Happiness (Chris Prentiss)
- Wherever You Go, There You Are (John Kabat-Zinn)
- A New Earth and Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle)
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
Photo Courtesy of Andreas (Flickr)
I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.
If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I am fascinated by human potential. I absolutely believe that if we see the best in others, we bring out the best in others – and in ourselves.
How great does it feel when someone believes in you – and genuinely means it – even after barely meeting you? While there are exceptions (I don’t advocate blind trust, for example) – seeing the good in someone can be one of the most powerful gifts in the world. Give it freely.
Last week I announced that I’m giving away two copies of the prettiest book that’s ever graced my coffee table, The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless.
I loved your comments! Some of my favorites:
- Mark KS - Linked to Hans Rosling’s TED Talk (uses “cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty”)
- Ryan – “I’m not sure this book would be suitable for my coffee table which currently features Men’s Health, ESPN the Mag, and Maxim Magazine. I can’t afford for people to realize I’m a dork – that would totally ruin the image I’ve so carefully crafted” (I don’t know Ryan, I think the cat’s already out of the bag…)
- Kristi R – “I think I might die and go to heaven if I’m ever fortunate enough to get people to send me books for free because I blog.” (Yes! It will happen – so set up that blog and send me the link ASAP!)
- David – “You get nerdier and nerdier every day. The nerdiness never ends. It’s hot.” (Thank you – I take that as the highest compliment!)
- Elisa – “Is there a chart in there for dating and love? If someone could break that down into a bar graph or something for me I’d be eternally grateful.” (Me too! I’d like some dating/love decision matrices that are masked in pretty colors to make the fact that I’m referencing them less depressing.)
- Royce – “That book is awesome. Is it nerdy if I would open that book up to appreciate the graphs and images, even if I completely ignored the actual content of those graphs? Too nerdy?” (Never! Nothing is ever too nerdy in my neck of the woods).
- Catherine – “I like lists, I like random facts, I like to organize, well, just about everything. But, to see such things in pretty graphical form?!? Sounds like my version of nerd heaven!” (Mine too – cheers!)
And without further ado – with screenshots from Random.org – congrats to Valerie M. and Doniree for winning the book giveaway!
Just as babies born near Christmas forever have their birthdays lumped in to holiday celebrations, my blog’s two year anniversary happens to fall squarely into the annual “best-of blog” posts and year-end reflection round-ups. But such is life! It gives me a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Or should I use a cupcake?
I started this website in March of 2006 as a resource for college grads (and as an excuse to practice my new-at-the-time HTML/CSS skills). After letting it sit painfully unfinished for two years, I added the blog in 2007, revamped the look and feel in January of 2008, stumbled around a bit and now FINALLY feel like I’ve gotten some traction (and beloved readers!) in the last year of blogging in 2009. (Check-out last year’s round-up here).
Personal Milestones:
I’m proud to report that in the last year, I successfully completed the following:
- Transferred into my dream role doing Coaching and Career Development at Google (after 3.5 years on the AdWords Training team)
- Finished a triathlon and half-marathon (full marathon was last year)
- Bought my dream car (the 2010 red Prius affectionately named Red Velvet)
- Wrote the draft of my book and started sending my proposal to agents and publishers (more on this in 2010)
- Led two People-On-the-Go Lunch and Learn webinars with Pierre Khawand, each with ~100 attendees (Gen Y in the Workplace and Twitter 101)
- Co-created and co-emceed the day-long iThrive Weekend Experience workshop with Jenny Ferry; delivered (live and via webinar) the portion on “How to Rock Your Personal Finances“
- Found out this week that I was selected for a three-year term on the International Association of Coaching’s Board of Governors
- Hosted several extraordinarily fun cupcake tweet-ups with my amazing blogger friends (IRL fo’ Life!) and dressed up as a cupcake for Halloween.
- Had the awesome experience of watching my Bruins play Tennessee from the sidelines at the Rose Bowl for my dad’s 60th birthday (thanks T-Bone for the sideline pass!)
Blog Stats:
- In the last month, I received 7,000+ visits (13,500 page views) from 97 countries – that’s double last year’s visitor stats.
- The top two referring keywords are “life after college” (~600 visits this month, not including the hundreds of variations on that query) and – surprisingly – life checklist template (147 visits).
- My favorite quirky searches that led to my blog are “I don’t date,” “dating sometimes you just have to go through the bad ones” and “are Harvard graduates really the smartest people in the world?” No – UCLA grads are, obviously!
Blog Features and Accolades:
- Featured in Jun Loayza’s Awesome Blogger Video Interview Series
- Landed on Ryan Stephen’s Top 10 Gen Y Blogs List: #1 in December (thank you!), #4 in August, #6 in June
- Featured as a Blog Crush in Elisa Doucette’s Blog Crush Series (almost made me cry!)
- Winner of Grace Boyle’s Crush It! Contest (with my Skills are Cheap, Passion is Priceless post)
- Featured in Matt Cheuvront’s Inconvenience of Change series (with my Complexity of Change post); also part of Matt’s 13 Gen Y Rockstars and 10 Blogs to Follow in 2010 lists (YTB Chevy!)
- Participated in Samantha Karol’s Appreciation Revolution (with my Making the Shift: From Resistance to Gratitude post)
- Featured in the always amazing Jamie Varon’s Girl Crush post
- Featured in Carol Phillip’s Millennial Women Disproportionally Influential post
- Nominated for Brazen Careerist’s Best Blog Posts of 2009
My Favorite Life After College Posts of 2009:
- Life: Temperature Check: What’s Your Quality of Life?, Motivated by Achievement: A Blessing and a Curse, On Confidence & Unconditional Love, Stop Auditioning for Other People’s Lives
- Money: 3 Little White Lies we Tell Ourselves when Spending Money, Budgets ARE Sexy When Simple, A Day in the Life of My Paycheck, Are you Clogging your Financial Arteries?
- Work: You don’t ALWAYS have to pursue your passion full-time, Create a Professional Development Strategy: Part 1 and Part 2, Learn to Love Feedback: It’s Your Career Currency
- Happiness: Expanding Happiness: On Fear and Bliss (with notes from Dad!)
- Dating: Do you go for Quality or Quantity? (my most commented-on post with 50+!), Dating is a Roller Coaster, A Note of Compassion for those Pesky Things Called FEELINGS
- Organization: On Big Rocks, Frogs and Productivity, How I Stay Organized, Something is Better than Nothing
- Book Notes: Living with Joy, The War of Art, Zen and the Art of Happiness
- Misc: In Defense of Twitter, Video: Happy New Year! No, I’m not crazy*, Lots of good quotes (too hard to choose)
- Templates: All of them!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. Your energy, enthusiasm, support and presence here on Life After College mean the absolute world to me. This blog has changed my life, and you are an enormous part of that. Hugs, kisses and cupcakes all around!
***
Want to stay connected? There are lots of great ways to get in touch with me on social networks:
Delicious | Google Reader | GoodReads | Twitter | 20 Something Bloggers | Brazen Careerist | Facebook | LinkedIn
Ladies and gentleman: I present you with The Visual Miscellaneum – a book I want to cuddle with and keep forever.
My blog has actually gotten to the point where I have more publicists offering to send books than I have time to review, which for a book worm is pretty cool! But when I heard that David McCandless of InformationIsBeautiful.net had a book coming out – I emailed them asking if I could have a review copy. Even better? I asked for two extras to give away (more details below).
The Visual Miscellaneum is the ultimate eye candy book for nerds – 255 GORGEOUS shiny, colorful pages with the most incredible info-graphics I’ve ever seen. I know I’m gushing, but this book is AWESOME.
From The Visual Miscellaneum Press Release:
Every day we are bombarded with facts and statistics that quickly become meaningless sound bites amidst the cacophony of the Information Age. It occurred to David McCandless, an award-winning London-based writer and graphic designer, that the best way to absorb this barrage of random information is by visually “mapping” facts in colorful and quirky ways.
The result, The Visual Miscellaneum: A Colorful Guide to the World’s Most Consequential Trivia, is a volume like no other: a simultaneously lighthearted and thought-provoking sourcebook to things both serious and goofy.
For amusement and edification, The Visual Miscellaneum compares coffee and cocktail ingredients, online viral videos, the lethality of cosmetic components, and video game sales. If a picture is worth a thousand words, The Visual Miscellaneum is a veritable library of culture, philosophy, spirituality, ecology, society, technology, history, economics, and pop culture.
Want to win a copy? Leave a comment!
When I like something, I tell people about it. When I LOVE something, I praise and promote like nobody’s business. Because I think this coffee-table book makes the perfect gift and I know it’s exactly the type of thing my readers (you) would love, I asked the publicist if they’d send me two copies to give away. Lucky for us, they said yes! So leave me a comment about your nerdy love for infographics (or anything, really) and I’ll pick two winners using Random.org. Comments will close at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, December 18.
Excerpts from the Book – Click image to enlarge in a new window:
Do you ever find yourself in a state so euphoric you feel the urge to immediately bring yourself back down? Snap back to reality before reality has a chance to kick you in the ass and disappoint you? I do.
I struggle with appreciating, enjoying and expanding happy moments. Sometimes I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or I immediately remind myself of all the people suffering and why I don’t deserve to feel so happy – convinced it will be taken away from me any second now. I’m learning to notice those thoughts and recognize them for what they are – fear. I know I am better than that. My motto is “live big!” – and fear and worry only rob me of that.
I just finished a fantastic book on this subject, The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, about The Upper Limit Problem – our limited tolerance for feeling good. Hendricks talks about how we shoot ourselves in the foot when we feel ourselves approaching (or God forbid – surpassing) our perceived upper limits of happiness and success.
I’m going to post The Big Leap book notes soon. Today’s post actually comes from a place much closer to home – they are excerpts from essays my dad (architect by day, painter/writer/reader/thinker by night) wrote on the subject of Bliss – that wonderful state of transcendent joy, at once elusive and incredibly rewarding. My dad and I had a conversation about The Upper Limit Problem this weekend, and last night I arrived home to find 30-pages of handwritten notes sitting in a manila folder on my doorstep. I’m so excited to share them with you – they are priceless – and no, I’m not just saying that because he’s my dad. 
Jim Blake (my dad!) On Bliss:
It takes courage to seek bliss and it takes courage to maintain bliss.
A state of bliss is, by definition, a separation from the norms of social life. It is a standing apart, isolated from the goals of the common, the goals stated and implied of the family, neighborhood, city and nation. Good gets stale quicker than bread. That which is good soon gets old and tired. Don’t be surprised when good goes bad. Bliss is dynamic.
Bliss allows you in and takes you for a ride – you want to live with it. Fear is a one-trick pony worth a 15-second glance in a museum – usually over sized – the first trick of missed bliss.
It takes courage to peel away from expectations. It takes courage to maintain a state of blissful separateness, and courage again to share what one brings back from that journey.
Harnessing Bliss
Take the time to win your private war against your mundane soul.
It is a war of daily battles.
It is a war won in the trenches
With hard work, healthy habits.
It is a war won when no one is looking – no one is listening
And you have all the time you need to prevail.
The Bliss Crash / The Agony of Bliss
1. It isolates an individual
2. There is always a crash!
The agononies and humiliations of loss.
The risk of the arena – not knowing the outcome.
Bliss is rugged – not gentle. It only looks easy and painless. The price is high (the bliss crash)
Loss of bliss – coming down from a bliss state – depression, anxiety, fear, resentment.
The Authority of Bliss
People tend to defer to one who has graceful and regular access to the bliss state and it’s poetic products – from Joe Montana’s superbowl victories to Erik Fischl’s seductively superficial brushwork – “they make it look easy” – “they make it look fun.”
Unconditional Bliss
Find bliss wherever you may be, whatever you are doing, and with whomever you are with. Make the very finest with what you have. You are the sum of your bliss.
