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[Persephone Magazine] Positivity Challenge Week 9: Finding a Happy Place

Positivity Challenge Week 9: Finding a Happy Place

From the article:

Oh, the elusive Happy Place. Sometimes used as an emotional retreat from trauma, sometimes as a mental break from outside stressors, and sometimes as a physical location where one can tune off the outside world. Creating and cultivating a Happy Place for yourself, both mentally and physically, can be one of the most beneficial things you can do for your mental well-being, but it can be hard to know where to start in finding yours. The Happy Place can be a useful retreat from stressors large and small. From stressful family gatherings to tough times recovering from a mental illness to dealing with distractions at work, a Happy Place can be a much needed time out from those things that you can’t change.

[Persephone Magazine] Positivity Challenge Week 6: Checking In

We’re a month into our Positivity Challenge and I think this week is a good time to check in and see how everyone’s doing. One of the greatest things that happens when you are more mindful about positivity is that you find the positivity comes back to you. Call it karma, the three-fold return law, coincidence, whatever you like…it happens. I’d like to share a couple of ways it’s returned to me this month.

[Persephone Magazine] Positivity Challenge Week 5: Roadblocks

So there you are, you’re doing great with this positivity thing. Or your new fitness routine. Or your job search. Things are going great and you’re feeling really great and then BLAM! The world dumps on you. You get an injury, you’re out sick for a week, you don’t get that promotion, your boyfriend is being a jerk, your mom is being a nag, your hair looks terrible and nothing fits right and your cat hates you and your couch is the wrong color…negative after negative keeps hitting you in the face and, to top it all off, a bird poops on you. Seriously, is this all I get for all my positivity? you ask the world.

[Persephone Magazine] Positivity Challenge Week 4: Drive-By Compliments

“You have beautiful hair.”

I almost had to look behind myself to see who the cashier was talking to. It couldn’t have been me. I barely finished drying it and just stuck it up in a ponytail in the morning and hadn’t taken it out since. My bangs were sure to be oily (from my huge forehead) and my roots were starting to come in. But she was, in fact, talking to me. And it brought a huge smile to my face as I said, “Thank you!” After my husband and I picked up our bags and started walking away, I realized I should have said something nice back. She had a really nice accent! Or… um… crap… I didn’t even see her name to compliment her next time I was shopping. I’d been blindsided by the compliment. I’d been the lucky recipient of a Compliment Drive-by.

[Persephone Magazine] Positivity Challenge Week 3: Stop Apologizing

[Persephone Magazine] Positivity Challenge Week 2: Fighting Media Negativity

Welcome back! This week, we’re going to tackle a topic that a few commenters brought up in the last Challenge.

Erika: “I’ve found that blog[s] typically have contributed to my cynicism and decreased empathy towards people. I tend to read many political blogs and or celeb gossip blogs, which inherently make me hate the world most of the time.”

CGMcBG: “I struggle with this also. I stopped watching the news a bit after 9/11, but the internet had [sort of] taken [its] place. I want to stay informed, but it’s hard to remain positive in light of such worldwide madness. How do you balance the two? (rhetorical question)”

[Persephone Magazine] Positivity Challenge Week 1: Reconnecting With Your Empathy

Well, 2012 is finally here. The year of the end of the world, or just when the Mayans got tired of making calendars. Rick Santorum wants to take away your birth control. It’s prime Seasonal Affective Disorder time. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore have split. Almost every country in the world is going through a financial crisis. There’s a chance that the November elections will have a very, very scary result. And…Matt Lauer might be leaving the Today show at the end of the year.

There are a lot of things bringing us down right now. Realistically, though, the world won’t be ending by Christmas, so the only way to combat all of the negativity swirling around you at the moment is to make a conscientious effort to bring in more positivity. While I’m by no means an expert in positivity, I have spent the last year trying to make myself more positive in ways big and small. The people around me can vouch for the success of my tactics (most of the time, at least). Every other week, I’ll talk about a specific aspect of positivity and give you a challenge for the weeks ahead. Feel free to share your ideas, encouragement, progress, and suggestions in the comments!

I See Them Trollin’…

persephonemag:

Just the other day, my husband emailed me a link to an awesome zombie fighting/apocalypse emergency kit that was all rolled into one kick-ass shotgun. As I looked over the pictures and technical descriptions, I thought that this was fantastic! Then I read the comments and within mere seconds, the viciousness of the internet was unleashed. 

Read more at Persephone Magazine

 Internet trolls are all over. How do you deal with them?

[Persephone Magazine] Tina Fey is a Bossypants

Read as an autobiography or memoir, Bossypants probably isn’t very compelling. Tina Fey has been blessed with some pretty good luck, timing, opportunities, or whatever you’d like to call it. Jumping from childhood to camp to working her way up through Second City ranks to getting the gig at SNL on her first try and an NBC sitcom on her second, her story is definitely not one of overcoming adversity. If that’s what you’re looking for from her book, you’ll find yourself disappointed (as, it appears Anna Holmes was).Read as a book of humorous essays, however, it becomes a book that you only put down so that you can go grab your husband or coworker from the other room and make them listen to you read entire pages aloud, knowing full well that you can never impart in your voice exactly why it’s so damn funny to you.

Have you checked out Bossypants? It was my first foray into the eBook world and I have to say, it was fantastic. I know they say that eBooks won’t make you a reader if you’re not one already, but I find myself futzing around on my iPad a lot, even when I’m not really doing anything. Having a book on it to read, made that action my default and definitely contributed to the speed in which I read it.

How do you feel about eBooks vs. good old paper?