Sunday, June 19, 2011

Lapis//// In progress

Blue chains in a blue sea
people swimming naked
blue and transparent
Soul and water
The blue and the gold of the lapis

Thursday, June 2, 2011

From old sweater to arm warmers :-)

Just some creative moment...I cut the sleeves of an old but still-nice sweater,sewed and made some arm warmers...



I love to combine arm warmers with different layers or wearing them with  t-shirts especially if I am cycling!

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Your life is great, now!!!!

60 TIPS FOR A STUNNINGLY GREAT LIFE
1. Exercise daily.

2. Get serious about gratitude.

3. See your work as a craft.

4. Expect the best and prepare for the worst.

5. Keep a journal.

6. Read Mahatma Gandhi's Autobiography "My experiments with the
Truth" and "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin".

7. Plan a schedule for your week.

8. Know the 5 highest priorities of your life.

9. Say no to distractions.

10. Drink a lot of water.

11. Improve your work every single day.

12. Get a mentor.

13. Hire a coach.

14. Get up at 5 am each day.

15. Eat less food.

16. Find more heroes.

17. Be a hero to someone.

18. Smile at strangers.

19. Be the most ethical person you know.

20. Don't settle for anything less than excellence.

21. Savor life's simplest pleasures.

22. Save 10% of your income each month.

23. Spend time at art galleries.

24. Walk in the woods.

25. Write thank you letters to those who've helped you.

26. Forgive those who've wronged you.

27. Remember that leadership is about influence and impact, not title
and accolades.

28. Create unforgettable moments with those you love.

29. Have 5 great friends.

30. Become stunningly polite.

31. Unplug your TV.

32. Sell your TV.

33. Read daily.

34. Avoid the news.

35. Be content with what you have.

36. Pursue your dreams.

37. Be authentic.

38. Be passionate.

39. Say sorry when you know you should.

40. Never miss a moment to celebrate another.

41. Have a vision for your life.

42. Know your strengths.

43. Focus your mind on the good versus the lack.

44. Be patient.

45. Don't give up.

46. Clean up your messes.

47. Use impeccable words.

48. Travel more.

49. Read "As You Think".

50. Honor your parents.

51. Tip taxi drivers well.

52. Be a great teammate.

53. Give no energy to critics.

54. Spend time in the mountains.

55. Know your top 5 values.

56. Shift from being busy to achieving results.

57. Innovate and iterate.

58. Speak less. Listen more.

59. Be the best person you know.

60. Make your life matter.


Posted by saidevotees_worldnet

Thank you!!!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Angsbacka, a great place in Sweden where love is shared


New Year Festival-30.jpg, originally uploaded by Ängsbacka.


This is the place where I spent New Year's Eve and met lots of exceptional people and had a wonderful time!
Workshop, music and lot's of tollerance, gratitude and good vibes: a place for healing definitely!
It warmed up my heart














Photos by Arjun Roodink: www.crystal-light.nl

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Time to find a new goal for us humans

I have been wondering lately about the way happiness works for us humans and if that is related to a purpose in life and to motivation. My thought is yes. I think we all search and need a purpose in our life, a purpose that makes us want to actually get out of bed in the morning and do something and spend our time doing something, because it must mean something.

Yesterday evening i watched a documentary about Chinese workers and their much less lucky working conditions compared to us in Europe: one woman was working in her farm for 15 hours each day, managing barely to live of it, while her husband works in town and they only meet in the week ends.
Another young girl was working in a factory from 6 am to 6pm and was not allowed to speak with her colleagues, nobody was allowed to speak with the others, for the whole 12 hours. She had a bed in a 15square meters room that she was sharing with other 3 girls. She only had Sunday off and she thought she was lucky and had a good life.
A woman and a man worked in a big town 600 miles from their hometown, they had to work so many hours that could not take care of their children who were 6years old. The kids remained in the village with their parents. Even if the distance was of 600 miles, they had only time to see their children once a year, for Xmas.
To me their life conditions, especially of the last couple, were not satisfactory but I remember the bits of life  told me her and there by my grandmother and the fact that she too did not know what a holiday is and did not know what a hobby is, since everything that she kept herself busy with in her life ( and still today, 92,she is alive and kicking!) were activities need for living or surviving, from cooking, to farming, to knitting,sewing and recycling. Even scraps of newspapers.
Maybe today, with our life rhythms were our job is actually doing work for others and not seeing the results in our practice, if not at the end of the month, in the form of the salary, we are not anymore connected with the purpose of our work. Or maybe we just have enough time to wonder about that.
Or maybe we have lost the purpose, the main goal that we want in our life.
In the case of my grandmother, it was purely surviving and raising 4 kids. The society was made up like that, the other families were functioning in the same way and there was no possibility or luxury to actually stop and think how worse it could get or wondering what was the purpose of all that hard work.
Then people were more religious and believed in some sort of divine justice and once again all the people of the classes had the feeling they belonged to those classes and were getting a sense of the purpose even by the class itself.

I have the feeling that in our world, society of today, at least in the western countries, the multiplicity of life dynamics and the less connection with the environment, has made us more unclear of where we are going or why we should be going towards a goal. And we are also less religious so also the rules, and somehow securities given by the dogmas of the religion do not reassure us anymore, do not make us anymore part of a community and with a sense.

But maybe it is a good thing.
If the purposes of our lives are so fixedly established by the government ( with social classes) and religion, and the community itself in which we live, then we have certainly not much space for our own desires, if we are able to see further from what has only been presented to us, as a chance.
When all the rules are set, and they are quite fixed and quite clear, you can only play a limited choice of moves.
But if the rules are more vague, or not as many, then we have certainly more freedom.
Freedom also implies more responsibility and more need of information in order to form one's real choices. Choices that are less influenced by the choices of other people and more by our desires.

So our problems as humans all come back to the same question, our purpose.
If you have chosen the religion, your God will have established rules and purposes for you, this will male your life regulated and you can wake up in the morning, thinking that living this life and then dying in 80 years make sense because God said so and will give you eternal life if you continue it.

If you have chosen your job or your family, these will be points motivating your stepping out of the bed in the morning and being active.

But what if, you need to have SOMETHING ELSE to motivate you?
What if, all that, does not satisfy you or convince you enough?

Maybe it is time for a new human paradigm,  maybe it is time for us humans to find a new goal.
Or to push our knowledge further, we should have more scientists and more philosophers, more researchers in all fields, to come with some new possibilities, about,

what are we living for?
why are we here?
what is awaiting us if anything?



Nel mondo occidentale di oggi, il senso di un obiettivo per cui vivere e motivarsi al mattino quando ci si alza dal letto si appanna sempre di piu'. Le classi sociali che un tempo creavano un senso di appartenenza si diversificano e la religione che un tempo rappresentava per molti, un elemento motivante,perde sempre pi'u importanza e contenuto. 
Un tempo i nostri obiettivi o motivazioni esistenziali erano anche influenzati dalla comunita' per cui molto poco rimaneva veramente da scegliere, questo dava anche poca liberta' ma il non essendone coscienti faceva si che per i piu' non fosse un disagio, in quanto non avevo necessita' si uscire dalle possibili alternative che conoscevano. Oggi invece si ha bisogno di nuovi paradigmi e possibili scopi di vita. Se la religione, le classi sociali e la comunita' ci influenzano di meno e non corrispondono piu' al nostro senso di identita' oggi all' essere umano servono piu' ricerca per creare nuovi paradigmi e per avvicinarsi di piu' alle risposte delle domande " perch'e viviamo? perche' siamo qui? che cosa ci attende, se ci attende qualcosa? ".