An Adventure in Space

"All adventures, especially into new territory,

 are scary."  ~ Sally Ride  (May 26, 1951 - July 23, 2012).

June 18, 1983 saw the first American Woman in space as a crew member on Space Shuttle Challenger for STS-7.  Sally Ride was both an American Physicist and an Astronaut.

The Beauty In All Of Nature

Those who find beauty

 in all of nature

will find themselves at one 

with the secrets of life itself.  ~L. Wolfe Gilbert

Develop a daily healthy habit of writing.

Why You Should Write Daily 

Posted: 26 Apr 2013 09:09 AM PDT

By Leo Babauta

One of the most instrumental changes in my life has been writing every single day.

For many years I was a writer who didn’t write that regularly. It was always on the back of my mind to write, but I didn’t find the time.

Then I started this blog in January 2007, and have written pretty much every day since then.

It was life-changing.

I recommend daily writing for anyone, not just writers. Here’s what I’ve found from my daily habit:

*Writing helps you reflect on your life and changes you’re making. This is incredibly valuable, as often we do things without realizing why, or what effects these things are having on us. 
*Writing clarifies your thinking. Thoughts and feelings are nebulous happenings in our mind holes, but writing forces us to crystalize those thoughts and put them in a logical order. 
*Writing regularly makes you better at writing. And writing is a powerful skill to be good at in our digital age. 
*Writing for an audience (even if the audience is just one person) helps you to think from the perspective of the audience. That’s when the magic starts, because once you get into the reader’s mindset, you begin to understand readers and customers and colleagues and friends better. You have empathy and a wider understanding of the world. 
*Writing persuasively — to convince others of your point of view — helps you to get better at persuading people to change their minds. Many people don’t want to change their minds when they feel someone is attacking their position, so they get defensive and dig into their position. 
*Writing daily forces you to come up with new ideas regularly, and so that forces you to solve the very important problem of where to get ideas. What’s the answer to that problem? Ideas are everywhere! In the people you talk to, in your life experiments, in things you read online, in new ventures and magazines and films and music and novels. But when you write regularly, your eyes are open to these ideas. 
*Writing regularly online helps you to build an audience who is interested in what you have to share, and how you can help them. This is good for any business, anyone who is building a career, anyone who loves to socialize with others who are interested in similar things as them. 

And that’s just the start. The full benefits of this regular habit are, ironically, not something you can put into words, but something that must be experienced to be known.

*How to Write Daily
There are various ways to get into the daily writing habit, but here’s what I’d recommend based on my experience:

1.  Commit to writing daily. Many people try to write a few times a week, or once a week. That’s too infrequent and it won’t become a habit that way. Instead, tell yourself, “I’m going to write every single day, no exceptions”. And then actually stick to this commitment.

2.  Set aside the time. Really important. You have to block off a small chunk of time for this, or it won’t happen. I suggest morning, as soon as you can, so that other things don’t get in the way. However, if you’re a night owl, late nights are fine too, as long as you’re not too tired.

3.  Start small. OK, you knew I was going to say this, but it’s really important. All you have to do is start writing each day — you don’t have to write 1,000 words or anything. Just start, and how much you do doesn’t matter. Once the habit is in place, you can lengthen it, but for now just start.

4.  Blog. You can write in a journal or text document just for yourself, but I highly recommend blogging. Get a free account at WordPress.com or Tumblr, and just start. Why blog? Because it really helps you to write regularly, and forces you to think in different ways, when you have an audience. Even if the audience is small. It’s scary, I know, but just do it. You’ll grow comfortable with it over time, and you should never let fear stop you from doing something amazing.

5.  Shut down distractions. The writer is best friends with distraction. He knows its powerful call, and must master the urge to follow it. So shut down everything that isn’t your writing tool, all tabs, all email programs and social media, and just write.

That’s all you need to get started. Over time, you’ll learn the power of interaction with your audience, and draw inspiration and lessons from the audience. But for now, just get started.

The Sea Change Program: Daily Writing
If you’d like help forming this great habit, I’d like to offer my Sea Change Program which I’ve created to help people form habits and change their lives.

In May, we’ll be focusing on the Daily Writing Habit, and I invite you to join us. More info on the program here, access:  http://zenhabits.net/membership-signup/ 

In addition, I’ve just added the Beginner’s Habit Program to Sea Change, for those who would like to learn the basic skills of habit formation. I highly recommend it if you’ve had trouble forming habits.

Dementia, Alzheimer's and Baby Boomers

When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.
Walter Mosley 

We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain - grief, despair, depression, dementia - is less accessible to treatment. It's connected to who we are - our personality, our character, our soul, if you like.
Richard Eyre 


Greater public recognition will also be critical in encouraging prevention and early intervention, and more generally in building public support to meet the challenges of dementia.
Julie Bishop 

This year, the first baby boomers turn 65. While Alzheimer’s is not normal aging, age is the greatest risk factor for the disease. This report conveys the burden of Alzheimer's and dementia on individuals, families, government and the nation's healthcare system.

"Too many of America's baby boomers will spend their retirement years either with Alzheimer's or caring for someone who has it." 

Where's the Treatment? Where's the Cure?

The National Institutes of Health spends over $6 billion a year on cancer research, over $4 billion on heart disease research and over $3 billion on HIV/AIDS research. But it spends only $480 million on Alzheimer's research.

The Truth about Alzheimer's that Every American Should Know:

Death rates for other major diseases — HIV, stroke, heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer — are declining. Alzheimer’s is the only top 10 cause of death without a way to prevent, cure or even slow its progression. 

There is great promise in Alzheimer's research and a focused commitment from the nation’s leaders could make the difference in solving the crisis. Please Get the "Generation Alzheimer’s report" to learn more about what can be done to conquer this devastating disease. 

*Source: Alzheimer's Association generation alzheimer's: the defining disease of the baby boomers

Love is...

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

A. A. Milne
Winnie the Pooh

Life is...

Created by Penelope Conway

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.

Life is beauty, admire it.

Life is bliss, taste it.

Life is a dream, realize it.

Life is a challenge, meet it.

Life is a duty, complete it.

Life is a game, play it.

Life is a promise, fulfill it.

Life is sorrow, overcome it.

Life is a song, sing it.

Life is a struggle, accept it.

Life is a tragedy, confront it.

Life is an adventure, dare it.

Life is luck, make it.

Life is too precious, do not destroy it.

Life is life, fight for it.

Mother Teresa

Strength & Patience

"If you would know strength
and patience, welcome
the company of trees."

~ Hal Borland, American author and journalist

Stress

'Lucas at the Museum' by Tom Mosser

"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability

to choose one thought over another."

~ Willam James

Holding a Grudge?

Ride by Trina Prrenzi


"Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness.
Laugh when you can,
apologize when you should,
and let go of what you can't change."

~Author Unknown

Boston Marathon Attack

Sooner or later...

Sooner or later we all discover

that the important moments in

 life are not the advertised ones,

not the birthdays, the graduations,

 the weddings, not the great goals achieved.

  The real milestones are less 

prepossessing.  They come to the

 door of memory unannounced,

stray dogs that amble in, sniff

around a bit and simply never leave. 

Our lives are measured by these.

~ Susan B. Anthony 

Dear IRS...

Contentment & Taking Chances

Justin DeRosa Photography

"Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want,

 but the realization of how much you already have."

~ Author Unknown

"Take chances, take a lot of them.

Because honestly, no matter where you end up and with whom,

 it always ends up just the way it should be.

Your mistakes make you who you are.

You learn and grow with each choice you make.

Everything is worth it.  Say how you feel, always.

Be you, and be okay with it."

~ Author Unknown 

Knowledge & Wisdom

"Knowledge can be communicated,

 but not wisdom.

One can find it, live it, be fortified by it,

do wonders through it, but one cannot

communicate and teach it."  ~ Herman Hesse

Beauty & Love

Parrot Tulip

"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."

~Rumi

We can never have enough of nature.

Picture by S J Kenney

"We need the tonic of wildness...
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things,
we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable,
that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and
unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
We can never have enough of nature."

~ Henry David Thoreau

Quote from Stephen Hawking

160,000 light -years away.  
Picture released to celebrate Hubble's 22nd anniversary.

"However difficult life may seem,

there is always something you 

can do and succeed at."

Stephen Hawking is a British cosmologist

 diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease 50 years ago

 while a  student a Cambridge University.

Ancient Egyptians believed...

Ceremonial Eagle by Sue Wise

Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death

 they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife.

The first question was, "Did you bring joy?"  

The second was, "Did you find joy?" 

~ Leo Buscaglia

Fear & Love

A macaque monkey rocks his cat companion after discovering her lost in the Indonesian jungle.

"There are two basic motivating forces:  fear and love.  When we are afraid, we pull back from life.  When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance.  We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections.  If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create.

Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness

 and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life."

~John Lennon

Virgil

"The greatest wealth is health." ~ Virgil 

In the Words of Albert Schweitzer

Reality versus Illusion

Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
 Earth-proud of the earth which is not theirs; 
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.

  HAMATREYA, Selected Poems (1876) - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Risk

"And the day came when the risk to

 remain tight in a bud was more painful

than the risk it took to blossom."  ~Anais Nin

Compassion and the Humane Protection of Animals

"Life is as dear to the mute creature as it is to a man.

Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other

creatures."  ~ His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Defining Moments In Our Life

Painting by Belgium Artist Pol Ledent

There are moments which mark your life.
Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same
and time is divided into two parts, before this,
 and after this...    ~ John Hobbes

The Most Surprising Regret OF THE VERY OLD...

Blossoms by Haif aa Tannous

The following article is by:
Karl A. Pillemer, Ph.D.Professor of Human Development, Cornell University; Author, "30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans"
GET UPDATES FROM KARL A. PILLEMER, PH.D.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-a-pillemer-phd/how-to-stop-worrying-reduce-stress_b_2989589.html

The Most Surprising Regret Of The Very Old -- And How You Can Avoid It
Posted: 04/04/2013 7:04 am 
What do older people regret when they look back over their lives? I asked hundreds of the oldest Americans that question. I had expected big-ticket items: an affair, a shady business deal, addictions -- that kind of thing. I was therefore unprepared for the answer they often gave:

I wish I hadn't spent so much of my life worrying.

Over and over, as the 1,200 elders in our Legacy Project reflected on their lives, I heard versions of "I would have spent less time worrying" and "I regret that I worried so much about everything." Indeed, from the vantage point of late life, many people felt that if given a single "do-over" in life, they would like to have all the time back they spent fretting anxiously about the future.

Their advice on this issue is devastatingly simple and direct: Worry is an enormous waste of your precious and limited lifetime. They suggested training yourself to reduce or eliminate worrying as the single most positive step you can make toward greater happiness. The elders conveyed, in urgent terms, that worry is an unnecessary barrier to joy and contentment. And it's not just what they said -- it's how they said it.

John Alonzo, 83, is a man of few words, but I quickly learned that what he had to say went straight to the point. A construction worker, he had battled a lifetime of financial insecurity. But he didn't think twice in giving this advice:

Don't believe that worrying will solve or help anything. It won't. So stop it.

That was it. His one life lesson was simply to stop worrying.

James Huang, 87, put it this way:

Why? I ask myself. What possible difference did it make that I kept my mind on every little thing that might go wrong? When I realized that it made no difference at all, I experienced a freedom that's hard to describe. My life lesson is this: Turn yourself from frittering away the day worrying about what comes next and let everything else that you love and enjoy move in.
This surprised me. Indeed, I thought that older people would endorse a certain level of worry. It seemed reasonable that people who had experienced the Great Depression would want to encourage financial worries; who fought or lost relatives in World War II would suggest we worry about international issues; and who currently deal with increasing health problems would want us to worry about our health.

The reverse is the case, however. The elders see worry as a crippling feature of our daily existence and suggest that we do everything in our power to change it. Why is excessive worry such a big regret? Because, according to the elders, worry wastes your very limited and precious lifetime. By poisoning the present moment, they told me, you lose days, months, or years that you can never recover.

Betty, 76, expressed this point with a succinct example:

I was working, and we learned that there were going to be layoffs in my company in three months. I did nothing with that time besides worry. I poisoned my life by worrying obsessively, even though I had no control over what would happen. Well -- I wish I had those three months back.
Life is simply too short, the oldest Americans tell us, to spend it torturing yourself over outcomes that may never come to pass.

How should we use this lesson, so that we don't wind up at the end of our lives longing to get back the time we wasted worrying? The elders fortunately provide us with some concrete ways of thinking differently about worry and moving beyond it as we go through our daily lives.

Tip 1: Focus on the short term rather than the long term.

Eleanor is a delightful, positive 102-year-old who has had much to worry about in her long life. Her advice is to avoid the long view when you are consumed with worry and to focus instead on the day at hand. She told me:

Well, I think that if you worry, and you worry a lot, you have to stop and think to yourself, "This too will pass." You just can't go on worrying all the time because it destroys you and life, really. But there's all the times when you think of worrying and you can't help it -- then just make yourself stop and think: it doesn't do you any good. You have to put it out of your mind as much as you can at the time. You just have to take one day at a time. It's a good idea to plan ahead if possible, but you can't always do that because things don't always happen the way you were hoping they would happen. So the most important thing is one day at a time.

Tip 2: Instead of worrying, prepare.

The elders see a distinct difference between worry and conscious, rational planning, which greatly reduces worry. It's the free-floating worry, after one has done everything one can about a problem, which seems so wasteful to them.

Joshua Bateman, 74, summed up the consensus view: 

If you're going to be afraid of something, you really ought to know what it is. At least understand why. Identify it. 'I'm afraid of X.' And sometimes you might have good reason. That's a legitimate concern. And you can plan for it instead of worrying about it.

Tip 3: Acceptance is an antidote to worry.

The elders have been through the entire process many times: worrying about an event, having the event occur and experiencing the aftermath. Based on this experience, they recommend an attitude of acceptance as a solution to the problem of worry. However, we tend to see acceptance as purely passive, not something we can actively foster. In addition to focusing on the day at hand and being prepared as cures for worry, many of the elders also recommend actively working toward acceptance. Indeed this was most often the message of the oldest experts.

Sister Clare, a 99-year-old nun, shared a technique for reducing worry through pursuing acceptance:

There was a priest that said mass for us, and at a certain time of his life, something happened, and it broke his heart. And he was very angry -- he just couldn't be resigned, he couldn't get his mind off it. Just couldn't see why it had happened.
So he went to an elderly priest and said, "What shall I do? I can't get rid of it." And the priest said, "Every time it comes to your mind, say this." And the priest said very slowly, "Just let it be, let it be." And this priest told us, "I tried that and at first it didn't make any difference, but I kept on. After a while, when I pushed it aside, let it be, it went away. Maybe not entirely, but it was the answer."

Sister Clare, one of the most serene people I have ever met, has used this technique for well over three-quarters of a century.

So many things come to your mind. Now, for instance, somebody might hurt your feelings. You're going to get back at him or her -- well, just let it be. Push it away. So I started doing that. I found it the most wonderful thing because everybody has uncharitable thoughts, you can't help it. Some people get on your nerves and that will be there until you die. But when they start and I find myself thinking, "Well, now, she shouldn't do that. I should tell her that . . ." Let it be. Often, before I say anything, I think, "If I did that, then what?" And let it be. Oh, so many times I felt grateful that I did nothing. That lesson has helped me an awful lot.

Worry is endemic to the experience of most modern-day human beings, so much so that following this piece of elder wisdom may seem impossible to some of you. But what the elders tell us is consistent with research findings. The key characteristic of worry, according to scientists who study it, is that it takes place in the absence of actual stressors; that is, we worry when there is actually nothing concrete to worry about. This kind of worry -- ruminating about possible bad things that may happen to us or our loved ones -- is entirely different from concrete problem solving. When we worry, we are dwelling on possible threats to ourselves rather than simply using our cognitive resources to figure a way out of a difficult situation.

A critically important strategy for regret reduction, according to our elders, is increasing the time spent on concrete problem solving and drastically eliminating time spent worrying. One activity enhances life, whereas down the road the other is deeply regretted as a waste of our all-too-short time on Earth.

Follow Karl A. Pillemer, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@karlpillemer
Article appeared on April 4, 2013 in THE HUFFINGTON POST

In the End...

Magnolia grandiflora (Souther Magnolia) picture by Maxie

"Everything will be okay in the end.

If it's not okay, it's not the end."

~ Author Unknown

There is Beauty in Silence

Dragonfly covered in dew.  Originally published in Quantum Physics & Science.

"Silences make the real conversations between friends.

  Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts."

Margaret Lee Runbeck

Knowing and Mastering

Poppies by Kim Rhoney

"Knowing others is wisdon;

Knowing the self is enlightenment;

Mastering others requires force;

Mastering the self needs strength." Lao Tzu

                                                                                                       

For those of us who have lost a pet....

In memory of the pets who have shared each person's life.  Since love is the basis of life, by cherishing and remembering their unconditional love we can heal when they cross over.  They are forever with us in love.

In the Words of Emerson...

"The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, or pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brief Reflection

by artist, Andrew Hutchinson

A good life is when you assume nothing,
do more, need less, smile often, dream big,
laugh a lot, and realize how blessed you are.

The Little Stray Cat

On the Subject of Respect...

Texas Wildflowers

"Respect for ourselves guides our morals;
respect for others guides our manners."

Laurence Sterne