Kategoriarkiv: #English

Trying out blogwith.co

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Got a comment on one of my #cleanse4expansion-blog posts on Evernote, from a guy named Bryan Lee, telling me about an app linking Evernote and WordPress, making it possible to publish blog posts from Evernote. He asked if I wanted to try it out, and sure, I’m game!
He sent me an email with these instructions:
Thank you for taking your time to test out the app. I have the site up over at http://blogwith.co/ and for the current version only text version is supported. However I’m adding image and markdown support soon.
 
When your finished the signup, a new notebook will appear in your evernote.
Titled ”BlogwithPublish”
 
Any note written in the notebook will be sync to wordpress. This is great from live blogging.
 
If you are writing a long post. If you write it in another notebook and when you are done, you can drag it into the ”BlogwithPublish” and it will be published 😀
 
Looking forward to your feedback soon.
So, yesterday I set up my account, and now I’m trying it out, for the first time. I’m writing this from Evernote, and will see what happens once I drop the note into my BlogwithPublish-notebook.
For me, there need to be support not only for text but also for images, since this will likely be the first blog post ever on herothecoach.com without an image of some sort. But I guess neither you nor me will die because of the lack of an image. But as you can see in the email, he’s working on adding image-support soon.
I also asked Bryan if it’s possible to link blogwith with more than one WordPress-account. For me, that would make it really useful, as I could then publish posts on several of my blogs, all working from Evernote.
I’m curious about tagging though, I guess the post will just be without WordPress-tags? What if I tag it in Evernote, you think it will pick up on that? Hm, gotta try that one out!
[Addition directly after publishing the post: No, it did not pick up on the tags I put on the note, it tagged the post with one tag, namely blogwith.]
And I guess the post will be uncategorized as well?
[Addition directly after publishing the post: Yes, the post remained uncategorized, so I have now manually corrected the categorization, as I want it to be.]
And can I delete the post from BlogwithPublish once I’ve gotten it published on my blog? I should be able to delete it from Evernote, shouldn’t I?
Wow, loads of questions! And one way to find out. Or actually two. I can try it all out, and/or Bryan can let me know in another comment. 🙂 Will just have to see what happens first.
[Addition directly after publishing the post: Blogwith did not pick up on the blank lines in the post either, except for the ones in the pasted email from Bryan himself, even though here in editing mode in WordPress it looks as if the empty lines should be visible all over. I hope this get’s fixed, because having a full post without empty lines makes it harder to read, in my view. Here’s a tip for you Bryan!]
Would you have any use for blogwith you think?

Made to bounce

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ball

Not a Christmas glass ornament. And no orange. Not even a rubber ball. But a ball, at least.

Did you know human beings are rubber balls? You see. We’re made to bounce. Truly. We’re not fragile Christmas glass ornaments, shattering to a trillion pieces if we’re dropped onto a floor. And we’re not oranges that seemingly can get dropped on the floor many times, without getting affected by it. Looking fine on the outside, but on the inside, rotting away, damaged by the constant battering onto the floor. You see, we’re rubber balls, made to bounce. That’s what we do when we’re dropped onto a floor.
This analogy comes to me via Michael Neill who got it from a book called Bounce.

Here’s one of my most momentous bounces:

9 months pregnant with my first child my then husband called (!) me up and said ‘I’m breaking up with you.‘.

I was 27, he was 29 and we’d been together for 10 years. Turns out that’s no guarantee you know one another. (But yeah, there were signs that something was amiss ever since the planned pregnancy was confirmed – and if I’m honest, the signs were accentuated by the pregnancy, they were there for years – but I still wasn’t prepared for what happened.)

I spent 24 hours wanting him back, begging him to stay with me, to calm me and hold me safe. Needless to say – he didn’t.

24 hours later, I turned the page of that chapter of my life, looking ahead rather than back, and I wouldn’t have taken him back even if he’d asked. Needless to say – he didn’t.

And to this day, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. For my child, it’s a different story for various reasons. Still, I can see how she’s benefitted greatly from me growing as a person ever since my bounce.

This was in 1999 and it marks the turning/starting point of my inner journey of discovery. Into something else, new, bigger, better. Living. Fully.

So yeah, we’re made to bounce. That doesn’t mean it’s ok for me to take other people (or myself) and throw them hard at the floor, anticipating the bounce, of course. No, we should be kind to one another. But shit happens. And when it does, we bounce.

Have you had one of those shit-happened-and-I-thought-my-life-was-over-for-ever-moments where instead you bounced into something else, new, bigger, better?

Playing an instrument

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Boy, am I lucky I slaved away at the piano as a kid, when I see this:

Now. Honestly. I never did amount to much, on the piano, even though I played it for like… 10-12 years or something. I just never managed to get fluent somehow, always having to struggle with learning the music from the sheet music.

I do sing a lot though, and have done, almost since the same time I started playing the piano. Possibly not the same thing, brain-wise, but still great fun and being a part of a choir is a super duper health boost!

And you know what? I promised myself I’d learn to play the guitar this year, and am strumming along, having learned a handful of chords. Now busy at trying to learn to progress between the chords in a fairly quick manner so I can play rhythmically.

Still a long ways to go though. But yeah, I can definitely see how (and why) playing an instrument will be like fireworks in the brain, in the very best sense of the word fireworks, at that. Can you?

Podcast 6/52 – The disembodied western culture

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On Being is, as you might have guess, a favorite of mine, when it comes to podcasts. And this episode is as good as the next. Because they truly all have something special.

In this episode I met Bessel van der Kolk for the first time, and just from spending fifty minutes with him and Krista, I know I would love to listen more to him. He’s an interesting man, and I would love to meet him, talk to him, listen to him tell me more about what he’s discovered during his life.

There’s a part of the show, near the end, where Bessel and Krista talk about the disembodied Western culture, and I’ll just let you read for yourself:

DisembodiedDR. VAN DER KOLK: … Western culture is astoundingly disembodied and uniquely so. Because of my work, I’ve been to South Africa quite a few times and China and Japan and India. You see that we are much more disembodied. And the way I like to say is that we basically come from a post-alcoholic culture. People whose origins are in Northern Europe had only one way of treating distress: that’s namely with a bottle of alcohol.

North American culture continues to continue that notion. If you feel bad, just take a swig or take a pill. And the notion that you can do things to change the harmony inside of yourself is just not something that we teach in schools and in our culture, in our churches, in our religious practices. And, of course, if you look at religions around the world, they always start with dancing, moving, singing …

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. Crying, laughing, yeah.

DR. VAN DER KOLK: Physical experiences. And then the more respectable people become, the more stiff they become somehow.

Disembodied. Stiff. Detached from ourselves.

Watched The Imitation Game for the second time the other day, and flinched at the ”stiff upper lip”-reference the head master makes when telling the teenaged Alan Turing about his friend Christoffer passing away during a holiday. I flinched, and feel very sad. How much pain have we, as a culture, not inflicted upon each other, by using words and phrases like that, setting that as the norm; being highly disembodied, clearly making it the thing to strive for.

And I think, even though Alan Turing must have been a school boy during the 20s, that it’s still so to a large extent. Rather than make use of our body for learning, school children in many many places are still told to sit still. Disembodied, that’s the culture we live in. And this is just one example, I’m sure I could come up with a number, if I wanted to. I don’t though.

Because perhaps there is a change coming? What with new research such as neuroscience, and new discoveries on learning, physical and mental development etc. Dare I hope?

 

The Imitation Game

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A few weeks ago I watched The Imitation Game, and was deeply touched by it. Watching it at the movies, At the movie theater, after my emotional breakdown. when the final minute was up, I was crying my heart out (as you can see in the snap shot selfie I took of my puffy face and red eyes). Fully aware I was in a movie theater, it didn’t really feel like the space to have an emotional breakdown, so I tried to regain my composure. Luckily, my company at the time, took a look at me, and knew precisely why I was crying hard. She said ”The things we humans do to each other”, or something similar. And yup. That was the thought running over and over in my head:

The things we do to each other.

Today I watched the film again. It’s as good. Or perhaps even better. I didn’t fall into complete heartbreak at the end this time around though, but a few tears were shed, not surprisingly. I strongly suggest you watch the movie.

And again. My head keeps on churning on the things we do to each other… Why oh why? Why do we do the things we do to each other? The bad things, the nasty, evil, inhuman and horrendous things we do to each other?

no one can imagineBecause, man, are we ever missing out! Here’s a genius, who…. no. I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, if you haven’t seen it yet. But suffice to say, without him, the world would indeed be a very different place than the world we live in today. And it would have cost a lot more human lives at that.

And Alan Turing is but one example. He made a huge contribution to mankind, but what about the rest, who perhaps are shut down – and there are many ways of doing just that! – before being able to share their gifts with the world? What unimaginable things are we missing out on? Can we really afford to continue this way, where the norm and the normal are for ever deemed ”the way to be”, and if you are not within that ever narrowing spectrum, we shut you out, ignore, ridicule, bully and harass you?

Why, oh why, do we do the things we do to each other?

Jojka mera! More joik!

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Du har säkert sett den, Jon Henriks vackra och själfulla jojk i Talang 2014. Eller så har du inte sett den. Sett förresten, det är lyssna du ska göra. Oavsett om du hört den förut eller ej. Klicka på PLAY, lyssna till hans berättelse, och sen sluter du ögonen när jojken börjar.

Det blir inte mycket vackrare än så, eller hur?

———————-

You’ve probably seen it, the beautiful and soulful joik performed by Jon Henrik on Talang (Got Talent) in 2014. Or you haven’t seen it. And seen…. you should listen. Regardless if you know what this is or you don’t. Press PLAY, listen to his story (English subtitles available), and then you close your eyes when the Sami joik begins.

It doesn’t get more beautiful than that, does it?

 

Podcast 5/52 – Autism at work

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It’s Sunday, and Sunday means podcast-tip of the week. This time, a program I listened to almost a year ago, but it’s stayed with me. It’s an RSA Event entitled Autism at work: Releasing Talent and Harnessing Creativity. It’s not an easy listen, perhaps, but do give it a chance. If you do, I believe you will hear something new.

I remember taking a walk while listening, getting frustrated and elated both. Frustrated because there is so much human potential that goes to waste, basically because of lack of understanding and knowledge. Elated because there is hope at the end of the tunnel, this program give examples of companies really thinking about what their needs are, and realizing people within the autism spectrum are spot on for those needs.there is a place for everyone

Now, that might seem callous of me, as if the only way to have worth on this earth is if you are employed and somebody can directly utilize your skills. That’s not what I mean, so please don’t misunderstand me here. Rather, opening up work places, organizations etc, for a wider spectrum of how human beings can be, with similarities and differences, hopefully will lead to a more allowing society.

I believe it to be an innate need of human beings, to belong. So what can be done, to enable more people to find their place and their crowd?

Podcast 4/52 – Invisibilia podcast

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Invisibilia is a glimpse into a world you can’t see.

Listen.

Feel different.

Those are the final words on the ”About Invisibilia”-webpage. I’ve listened to the three first episodes, and I am intrigued. It’s interesting, funny, astounding and sometimes downright horrible.

glimpse unseen worldsI could probably put each and every episode into a podcast-recommendation blog post, but it seems like it’s a series that really belong together, and since it’s just started to air, I’ll simply recommend you start with episode one, and if it get’s you hooked, do what I’ve done, and just continue!

The first one has the alluring title of The secret history of thoughts, and I greatly enjoyed listening to it. I agree with some of the stuff, totally disagree with some other things, and overall had a great time listening. I actually relistened to the episode the other day, and the second story about the locked-in man is especially fascinating.

Just listen. Maybe you’ll hear something you’ve never heard before when you listen. Ready for a glimpse into a world you can’t see?

Space to be

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Do you have that? The space to just be in?image

A space, and a place, where there aren’t any must-have’s, shoulda’s and woulda’s.

Where you can just sit with it. Whatever it is.

Watching thoughts come and go.

Listening to the sounds surrounding you. Sounds from nearby, and sonds from afar.

Perhaps feeling your heartbeat in your body. Hearing it even?

Feeling the rise and fall of your chest, breathing in, breathing out.

Best part? This space can be created anywhere, anytime. Have you experienced it?