On Experiencing Wonder Again

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

~Albert Einstein~

How long has it been, I wonder, since you’ve had your breath taken away, since you’ve been completely delighted? When was the last time that you were speechless with joy, or laughter? If you aren’t experiencing moments like these in your life with some regularity, perhaps it’s time to reassess the reason your doing what you’re doing. I've been blessed in the last 6 months to have many such moments, and its awakened me to the fact that for a time, I wasn’t having so many of these moments. In looking back, I believe I can identify three things that I was doing in my life that were keeping me from having those “speechless” moments:

1) I was moving too fast~ I know I've mentioned this in my previous post, but it just can’t be overstated. During the time when my life had few moments of wonder, I was constantly on the run. My weekends were spent seeking some fun and adventure that was at least several hours from home. Now, there's nothing wrong with travel, and I love travel. But when you try to force too much travel, too many experiences, too much fun, into too short an amount of time, what you end up with is one fun but stressful blur. I have experienced many more moments of wonder laying in the grass around my house, or walking in the woods right outside my door.

2) I was spending too much~ This really goes with point one. I've found that my low key, low cost adventures yield my a much richer experience than those that I payed out the nose for. There are some exceptions to this, but they are few and far between.

3) I had no time for introspection~ At the end of my day I was so tired and exhausted that I usually couldn’t even fire off a half baked prayer, let alone have the leisure to reflect on the events of the day. This kind of living leads to what I call a reactionary lifestyle. We get to moving so fast that we have no time to determine why we are doing the things we do. We simply must react. This type of unconscious, unintentional living is one of the best ways to waste ten years of your life, or find that somehow your life is not turning out anything like you had planned.

So those are just three things that, once removed, have brought back the “wow” factor in my life. So take some time today and reflect. What makes you smile? What stops you in your tracks? What makes you laugh so hard that you cry? Figure out what it is, and put your life back in tune.

The Perfect Now

As you might have noted, there was no post for yesterday here on SqueezedFresh. No I haven’t given it up, in fact, I've been making some great online relationships, and just recently got included in the Living by Design blog carnival number 23! All of this has been great, so why skip the all important Monday? Well, I was out having adventures and misadventures on my motorcycle all day. Long story made short, I rode over 200 miles, experienced both some of the most stressful and most relaxing road that I've yet rode on, and failed a motorcycle skills test. Although this may sound like a weak excuse for missing my post day, I really feel that I realized something important out there on the road. The pavement was perfect, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I was HAPPY. I wasn’t reading about being happy, I wasn’t thinking about how to have happiness in my life, I wasn’t trying to lifehack anything. I was just enjoying the beautiful perfect NOW. I had another moment of perfect now yesterday evening. I was laying in the grass with Micalyn, and we were listening to the sounds of kids playing, watching clouds, and simply enjoying one another's presence. It was perfect. It didn’t need to be thought about, or analyzed. The perfect now can’t be looked at in that sense. Instead, you’ve just got to absorb it, soak it in. If any of you are like me, you have a mind that needs to make lists, analyze, and ponder. But sometimes in our pursuit of happiness we just need to stop all of that higher intellectual function and just BE. So today’s post is an encouragement to you. Leave your desk, skip the blog post, and go find your perfect now!

Weekend Pearl: The Best Place to Learn Guitar

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

~Berthold Auerbach~

I love music. A lot. For years, my love was limited to appreciating the work of others, then I learned to play guitar. Now my love borders on obsession. The ability to play has really enriched my life, and I want to share with you what I have found to be the best site to learn how to play. Its Called Chordie.com. You don't need any formal training or knowledge of guitar in order to get started. In fact, with a little persistence you could probably learn a simple song in just one day. There are even diagrams to show you how to play each chord. Check out this public songbook that has some easy to play songs. So use the weekend and open some new doors in your mind!

Vapid dialogues and Shallow Demagogues

“What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?”

~William Shakespeare~

I don’t know about you, but I'm sick of hearing about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s racist, anti-Semitic minister. I know, I know, it’s important to the campaign. And it’s not that I'm sitting in Obama’s corner wringing my hands about his chances of winning the primary elections. I'm simply weary with the fact that we as a people haven’t moved beyond this. In my estimation, the dear Reverend isn’t even the main issue here. There have always been and always will be madding, divisive demagogues spewing forth their vitriol to the masses. The question that looms in my mind is, when the masses will stop listening? The real moral tragedy isn’t that the Reverend hates me because I'm white, or hates me because I'm middle class, or hates the Jews. The tragedy is that he has been able to make a lifelong career out of playing the race card and harming his own ethnic community through his attitude of learned and eternal victimhood. If he was one crazy, hateful man, it wouldn’t matter. But he’s not. He’s one hateful man that has 10,000 people in his congregation who evidently really enjoy listening to his drivel. THAT is a moral travesty. My suspicion is that, as senator Obama maintains, many in the congregation aren’t even listening to what he’s saying, perhaps the senator and many others are only there to enjoy the reality-TV-show like shock factor. Regardless of the reason, this huge following is very telling. Our popular culture seems to be more fixated on ideas and people that are shocking or entertaining than upon those that have substance. Our world has become so superficial that we have in many ways regressed into a pre-enlightenment dark age in which spectacle reigns supreme. We look with horror or morbid amusement at the savage glee surrounding witch hunts, but have we not become the same? Giving our attention, and often times support, to an idea or public figure merely because we are amused by the grotesque nature of them? In the last few decades, we’ve lost our moral anchoring, and drifted into hedonism. Now I fear that even hedonism has lost its allure, and something darker and uglier is beginning to hold us in its thrall. Are we becoming modern barbarians? Fixated on the spectacle of watching proverbial blood spill? Only time will tell. We desperately need a grassroots movement that champions ideas , entertainment , and people of substance. The greatest hope for this, I believe is in the free exchange of ideas we find here, on the web. So let’s stop having vapid conversations about hateful men, and move on the dialogues that have some substance!

5 Steps to Enjoying Each Day

“Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”

~Eddie Cantor~

Anyone who's been watching the field of tech knows that the future is mobile. We all want our computers a little lighter, a little smaller, with more battery life and internet capabilities. Why, you may ask? Well so that we can get more done of course. So we can now take work with us wherever we go. As I was pondering this, it struck me as how we are all really missing the point. The original purpose of the computer was to free up more time, not take up more time. It’s the same with most of our technology. I didn’t have to bring in wood this morning, yet I'm warm, and breakfast is cooking. I didn’t have to draw and heat water over a fire when I took my shower, etcetera. We have all of this technology in place to save us time, and so it has. It is what we have done with our time that is the problem. Instead of using our free time to enjoy each day, we've used it to do more each day. Instead of allowing us to slow the pace of life a bit, it has allowed us to speed it up. Today we leverage the time saving aspects of technology so that we can maintain a quick, almost frantic lifestyle. Our lives have become so fast that even our leisure time is stressful and expensive. What would happen I wonder, if instead of filling our new found time to the bursting point we filled it with just a reasonable number of good things? What if we used our time to just stop and enjoy our day? Here are five steps that I have found help me make the most out of my day, instead of just doing the most:

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1) Get up early- I have consistently found that my best days are those in which I get up early. There’s something about not being rushed during those sacred morning rituals that really helps start the day off right.

2) Turn it off- We all love our gadgets, myself very much included. But if you can just turn it all off for even half an hour, you will be well on your way to really being able to enjoy the day. Our computers and phones speed us up far more than I think we often realize.

3) Don’t try to do it all- this applies to work and leisure. Take your day, pick only those things that absolutely must be done today, then do them. Then pick only a few things that you want to do, and really enjoy them. If you want to go to a movie, go to a movie. Don’t go shoppingthentothearcadethentotheputtputtcoursethenamovie. Just pick one thing, and really enjoy it.

4) Get outside- Walking to your car doesn’t count. Actually step out of the door and enjoy the day, it won’t hurt you. Literally take time to smell the roses, or whatever flower happens to be nearby.

5) Learn to say no- This is perhaps one of the most valuable skills that you’ll need to acquire if you want to enjoy every day. You may have succeeded in slowing your life down, but it’s all a moot point if you allow everyone else to speed you up again. Its hard to say no to coworkers and friends, but if you want to be able to slow down and really enjoy life, instead of just blitzing through it, that’s a skill you’ll need to master.

5 Blogs that will improve your life

Anyone who has ever read a book knows about the potential that a good read has to mold your philosophies and changed your perception of life. Well, a good blog can do the same thing. In fact, a blog arguably has more potential because of the increased intimacy between the blogger and their audience. Below you’ll find the five blogs that have enhanced my view on life in a very positive way. They have made me a better person, so I thought I’d share them with my readers.

Zen Habits- This is overall my absolute favorite blog. Leo is a fantastic blogger, and his consistently thoughtful and gracious writing has many times changed how I view the world. I couldn’t speak highly enough of this blog.

Life Remix- The recently launched Life Remix is a collection of the crème ala crème of personal development blogs. It’s a great blog for discovering other writers that you really enjoy.

Lifehacker- For all things digital, it doesn’t get any better. Lifehacker has multiple writers so it’s constantly updated and consistently useful.

Get Rich Slowly- Money isn’t what happiness is all about, and it much easier to accept that when your not struggling with debt. This blog will change how you think about money.

Lifedev- Productivity can be about one of two things. It can be about getting more done in your day, or it can by about getting your day done in less time. Whichever one of these scenarios fits you, you’ll find lots of ways to achieve it on Lifedev.

And lastly of course there’s squeezedfresh! I created this blog because I could never find anyone who was writing consistently on our ever shifting culture. So read on, and make friends with some good blogs.

Six Benefits to Creating a Personal Manifesto

“Preparation for old age should begin not later than one's teens. A life which is empty of purpose until 65 will not suddenly become filled on retirement.”

~ Dwight L. Moody ~

man·i·fes·to (mān'ə-fěs'tō) n. pl. man·i·fes·toes or man·i·fes·tos A public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially of a political nature. intr.v.
man·i·fes·toed, man·i·fes·to·ing, Man·i·fes·toes To issue such a declaration.

Although most of us associate manifestos with communist regimes, the reality is that any group party or individual can create one. A manifesto is merely a document outlining principles and beliefs. In this article, I’m going to elucidate the benefits of creating your own personal manifesto. This article will be followed up by a Howto on exactly how to go about writing yours.

Six Benefits of writing your manifesto

1) Know thyself

Writing your principles, goals, and intentions out is a great way to engage in some self exploration. In fact, you may actually be surprised by what you discover about yourself when you actually sit down and make yourself articulate what you want.

2) Solidify what it actually is that you want out of life
Many times we don’t get what we want out of life because we don’t really know what we want. We drift through each day with only a hazy set of goals and aspirations. In such a state, it’s easy to make missteps. Writing out your goals in life is a one effective method to really define to yourself what you want.

3) Reassess your life’s direction
When you do write out your manifesto, you may be shocked to realize that what you want out of life and where you’re going in life are two different things. It’s very common to allow the daily grind to bury our most cherished dreams in a heap of bill paying, careless spending, and just generally following the path of least resistance. Although this realization may be dismaying, it’s a priceless epiphany if you actually want to someday live your dreams.

4) Motivate yourself
Whenever you feel like your life is going nowhere, you can always pull out a personal manifesto and draw inspiration from your dreams. If your grinding through a hard time at work or school, you can look at those dreams and know that the sacrifices you are making in your life will someday pay off big.

5) Keep a record of your personal growth
One of the neatest things you can do is reassess and rewrite your manifesto each year (or every six months, etcetera). After a few incarnations, you will really be able to see your growth as a person. It’s a fascinating and useful tool for introspection that will help you to see the person you were, as well as the person you are becoming.

6) Stay on track.
Take your personal manifesto and post it on your fridge or cubicle wall, and you will be amazed at how much easier it is to chase down your dreams. There’s something about having a tangible representation of your personal beliefs and goals that is very empowering. So go ahead create yours today!