Jamie Fellrath | Practical Mindfulness

If you're a Twitter user, you're probably aware of a tradition/practice that takes place on Fridays which are called "Follow Fridays." By marking your tweet with a hashtag of "#FF" or "#FollowFriday", you then let the world know of a person that you're referring to as a good person to follow on Twitter for some reason. Now to be fair, I think a lot of people are using Twitter's Follow Friday tradition poorly.  They simply send out four or five tweets full of names of people who've started following them recently, with no reason why or what they offer.  And that's done two things to me: one, it makes me ignore those tweets because they're almost incomprehensible; and two, it annoys me to the point where I've stopped following a few people because they do it constantly. I like to do my Follow Friday tweets with something a little different in mind: I do it to show gratitude.  Showing gratitude is one of the very basics

I recently read Darren Hardy's new book The Compound Effect .  This is a book that I wish I could give to EVERYONE I know, it's that powerful.  And it clarified for me a number of things I knew, but didn't necessarily realize that I knew. The book is about how to create a number of small, positive habits and actions that will add up over time to make a big impact, but one that will probably not be seen immediately.  In America, we tend to look for the BIG change, the next BIG thing.  We want to do something all at once and have a huge impact.  And we also perceive that things happen that way. But they don't.  It just SEEMS that way. I've been on a diet plan called the Primal Blueprint for almost two years now.  It's a low-carb, "caveman" type diet (and I highly recommend it) with some other fitness and lifestyle points attached to it.  But for a long time it seemed like nothing was happening with it.  I'd been riding my bike to work for a lo

A Randy Gage retweet this morning got me thinking about how we deal with setbacks in our lives.  Here's the Tweet: RT @ markshaw : Totally agree: When things go wrong look in the mirror, not out of the window thanks @ jasoncobine Let's look at how we deal with the setbacks in our lives.  It's very easy, and even a little comforting to some people, to be able to look at a setback and find other people to blame.  And it may be that other people took a role in helping that setback happen to you.  No matter how hard we try to be conduits for positive energy and bring good things to everyone around us, there are some people whose defenses simply can't be overcome with what is good. Finding fault with other people around us affects our prosperity momentum in a number of ways that I'm going to call the Energy Conduit .  Let's go through what your mind feels when you blame someone else. 1.  First, we get angry and seethe with rage for a bit.  Getting angry damages

I've been sort of smacked in the face with the use of relics in the past few days.  Now this isn't a reference to any specific religious relics - I'm not being flogged with St. Sebastian's bones or anything like that.  No, the relics I'm referring to are those that remind me of the promises I've made to myself.  J.B. Glossinger talked about relics a bit today in his Morning Coach podcast on the "Depth of Creativity."  He described them as a way to touch your spirituality or ground your spirituality in yourself, and they can be religious reminders or otherwise - whatever serves you best. I have a few relics that I keep with me daily.  One is a Livestrong bracelet.  Yeah, that yellow one that Lance Armstrong wears.  I initially started wearing it because I thought (and still think, for that matter) that Lance is an ultra-stud and wanted to support him in his quest for the Tour de France title(s).  But as I've moved through life, the quote "L

One of my favorite and most regularly-read websites is Elephant Journal . It's ostensibly a yoga and Buddhist website, but they really break into a lot of topics such as the environment, pop culture, general health issues, and more. And it's part of the more that I'm writing about today, as a follow up to their article: " Walking Your Talk: How Do You Treat The Waitress? " A few years ago, when my family and I were vacationing in Tampa, we had dinner with some friends who met us at the hotel we were occupying at the time.  Now we'd been at this hotel for the better part of a week at this point and had gotten to know some of the staff there a little bit.  They'd always given us great service and been cheerful about everything they did, and we showed them our appreciation via tips and general friendliness.  In other words, we'd created a nice relationship with the folks working there. We sat down with our friends in the lounge/restaurant area that

While riding down High Street this morning, I passed the Greek Orthodox Church south of the Short North, and noticed a small sign on one of the exterior spotlights (the ones that light up the church from the outside).  The sign read "Please clean up after your pets."  My mind began to wander a bit as I went from "man, people need to take responsibility for their pets" to "but what about pee? I bet that light would corrode from being peed on over and over by dogs." Yeah, kind of gross, I know. But it led me to thinking about an article I read in Success Magazine a couple weeks ago (the one with Steve Jobs on the cover).  The article was a preview to a new book by the magazine's publisher, Darren Hardy, and was called "The Compound Effect."  Hardy pointed out in the article that success isn't made up of doing hundreds of things once, but rather doing a few small things hundreds of times . Simple, isn't it?  Let's look at this

In a case of clear clairvoyance on the part of MorningCoach.com 's owner and podcaster J.B. Glossinger, today's podcast was about sleep. I say this because I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night, and it's affecting my day even beyond simply being tired.  I was up late watching a movie I'd wanted to see for a long time and was just released in the US.  But the long weekend combined with some sketchy sleep during said weekend combined with simply not getting enough last night has made today pretty lethargic in a lot of ways. I'm not motivated at all.  I'm feeling sort of queasy. I didn't do much personal evolution work today other than listen to the podcast.  I'm having trouble getting my mind around my job today.  I'm uttering the phrase "oh, whatever" way too much.  And I'm letting too many negative thoughts enter my head without trying to flush them out. Sure, we're not always going to get enough sleep.  But to go do