Favorite Finds Of The Week

This weekend we were going to try camping in the backyard with the boys. However, with nearly 5 inches of rain expected today and tomorrow we’ve decided to postpone it for a couple of weekends. Instead we are going to get creative and finish up the side rails on the deck and stairs…how exciting!

If you too are having a soggy weekend and find yourself sitting at the computer be sure to check out these great reads I came across this week. Have a good one all!

The Hidden Secret to Genuine Happiness – Happy Lotus

In one of my previous posts, I shared the fact that there were 4,000 books published on the topic of happiness in 2008. Happiness is something that so many people want to have in their life. Call it optimism, joy, bliss or whatever floats your boat; people want to feel good about themselves and life.

I was five when I decided that I wanted to be happy. I remember the day as if it were yesterday. I was walking home from school, fed up with having to go there every day. My family was the first ethnic family to move into the neighborhood and my name was extremely unusual. Kids made fun of me and it was constant. I came home from school every day in tears. It is hard to be a kid, even harder when you are the sole ethnic one in your neighborhood.

10 Ways Being Nice Is Good For You – My Super-Charged Life

Did you know that being nice to others can actually be good for you? My mother always chided me to be nice. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.  After all, we all get grumpy from time-to-time and take it out on those around us.

We can see that being nice to others is good for them, but did you know it is in your best interest too?  Recognizing the personal benefits of being nice might motivate us to do it a little more often like when that person cuts us off in traffic.

The Right Kind of Action – Someday Syndrome

Someday Lesson: Curing Someday Syndrome requires not only action, but the correct set of actions.In one of my many past work-lives (yes, I’m a typical artist with a million different jobs on my resume) I was a website usability specialist. I would review and design sites based on how they looked, how well people could find information and how readable that information was. When I was a Professional Organizer, I would periodically go through the websites of my fellow Canadian Organizers and rate them, giving them grades from A through F. The majority of these sites received a D or lower.

Toxic Friends and How to Dump Them – On Simplicity

I think just about every person in the world has had a toxic friend in their life at one point or another.  There’s no blueprint of toxicity and no warning signs to steer us clear of these folks. (That’s unfortunate…)  There are some common patterns that emerge in a toxic friendship: An unequal expectation of how much each person is supposed to give to the relationship:

A person who claims “star status” in the friendship

A lack of flexibility and room to grow

Any of these sound uncomfortably familiar?  It may be time for some distance if you’ve got relationships with “toxic” written all over them.

Car Maintenance Tips: Help Your Odometer Reach 300,000 Miles – Frugal Dad

The July 1, 2009 edition of Bottom Line Personal, one of my favorite publications, included an excellent column on car maintenance tips. Columnist Eric Peters, author of Automotive Atrocities! The Cars We Love to Hate, shares his tips for maintaining cars and extending their useful life. As the owner of a 19 year-old vehicle, I appreciated the tips, and wondered if my vehicle would be in better shape had I read this several years ago when I first started driving it.

Five Maintenance Tips For Getting To 300,000 Miles