Take it

"Take the risk - your life grows or shrinks based upon the risks you take."

Stole this off someone's Facebook comment (I tend to do that) who was replying to Sheryl Sandberg's call for career advice which anyone had received from a mentor.

Take the risk!

Awesome things # 2

I've previously blogged about coming up with things to add to this already wonderful list of 1000 Awesome Things (on visiting it now I can see that you can actually submit your own so I have no excuses) and came up with another one today - remembering you have knowledge inside of you, that you haven't accessed for ages (ok, the title needs work).

I got this uniquely great feeling when I saw Google's Doodle today:

Without having to do the ol' hover-over-the-picture-and-lets-pretend-I-knew-it-was-bastille-day, I immediately knew this was for Mies Van Der Rohe, and specifically was a doodle of his Crown Hall.  I always get a kick remembering I have all this nerdy design knowledge inside of me from my uni days.  Hilariously this particular work is familiar to me because we had to do a subject in architectural drawing and, as I hated the subject, I tried to find a building that would be super easy to draw - which is where Mies came in (hello lots of right angles and no weird curves).

Having it pop up on my search engine this morning was like a dorky in-joke between me and the internet.

And it felt awesome.

The weekend gone

But when the weekend come, the weekend come, y'all could come.

Hump day morning

With entrepreneurial chats over good coffee...

and just enough sunshine through the clouds,  hump day morning is not so bad.

Starting a movement

Or, the importance of celebrating your first followers.

Some hilarious footage illustrating how to start a movement - in less than 5 minutes.

"Your first follower makes that lone nut a leader."

Acceptance

More bold words from the first advice columnist I've ever been addicted to, Dear Sugar.  This is from Tiny Beautiful Things - 

"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be.  Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. 

Acceptance is a small, quiet room."

Keep on moving

Work going tough?

Let Bruno Mars and the Sesame Street crew give you some encouragement on not giving up.  Admittedly, your Monday blues are probably due to more than just catching a ball or roller skating, but keep on going, you're on a boat so keep on rowing.  And yes, my aforementioned Sesame Street obsession continues.

Happy Monday!

Nothing good gets away

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

Reposting this whole darn thing because it's just so good - originally from Letters of Note via A Cup of Jo.  

"And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away."

I'll leave you to enjoy the rest on your own.

In November of 1958, John Steinbeck — the renowned author of, most notably, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and Of Mice and Men — received a letter from his eldest son, Thom, who was attending boarding school. In it, the teenager spoke of Susan, a young girl with whom he believed he had fallen in love.

Steinbeck replied the same day. His beautiful letter of advice can be enjoyed below.

New York

November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

Flex and shake

DJ and yoga mat - what more do you want at the end of a long week?

On the back of this talk on the importance of happiness (and the place of meditation to get you there) I decided to go out on a limb and went to my first Future Sound of Yoga session last Friday, it was so great!  While there is no way of explaining what it is without raising eyebrows (traditional yoga meets freeform dance and DJ) I absolutely recommend it as a great couple of hours flexing, unwinding and shake shake shaking that booty.

A fabulously refreshing way to spend a Friday night, and better yet you'll be just as bright eyed come Saturday morning.  Bring a friend as there's plenty of tandem poses to try out before you both hit the dance floor.

Sunday links

Brunch at the very excellent Wilbur's Place, by the Bourke St Bakery clan.

It's been a week of simpler pleasures as my obsession with toast continues, to the point where I have considered holding a party similar to this one where there is only the option of good toppings and maybe a medley of cheeses.

Discovered Bocelli's lullaby to Elmo, which happens to have some of the greatest slow-motions scenes ever; this sent me trolling on a number of clips including one on friendship an possibly the best adaptation of the alphabet I have ever seen.

Good thoughts on changing your language as a means of checking whether or not the way you allocate your time aligns with your priorities (clearly, toast and children's songs has been a priority for me this week and that is just fine by me).

New avenue

I wanted to lick that shallow silver bowl.

Until today I could not say that I'd ever woken up thinking about last night's hummus, but that is exactly what happened today.  Neild Avenue, for all it's criticism about its wait times officially has me dreaming of mushed chickpeas (baked, with strips of cured wagyu beef... and I am still trying to work out what gave it a moreish sweet edge).

I am always so excited when I experience a new restaurant that adds flavours to my list of crave-able dishes.  This is an avenue you must go down - sit under their high warehouse ceilings, order too much wine and get that great feeling like you're in a new city.

Sugar hit

My mama is one of those people who'll often buy into the latest crazy scheme about how to diet / suppress your appetite.  Of course they never last, but one that I remember from my childhood was the idea of fulfilling one of your senses over another, to suppress a craving (e.g. try smelling whatever it is you want to eat instead of actually eating it).  This resulted in us keeping empty Guylian boxes (remember when they were the most exotic chocolates ever?) to sniff whenever we had a chocolate yearning - needless to say it didn't last a week.

Anyway, I'm not sure if it's the late afternoon talking (or these hideously grey skies) but I am craving a sugar hit something chronic.  In the spirit of my mother's hilarious methods I'm going to blog about it and feast my eyes rather than my stomach this afternoon.  

Here are 3 sweet treats that I could hoover in an instant right now:

1. The king of macarons Adriano Zumbo - salted butter caramel anyone?  Spiced pumpkin?   Just say yes.

2. What's better than an ice-cream cake?  An ice-cream cake in the shape of a mini hamburger, courtesy of the Messina Lab (pre-pigging out photo here)

3. In lieu of the above I get periodic cravings for my favourite candy of the moment, in this case it's sour peach hearts - these particular ones are from the famous Leura Candy store.

Ok, off to smell a Guylian box.  Wish me self-control!

Human moments

Connect over coffee.

Discovered this paper on The Human Moment at Work, an article covering the necessity for humans to have engaged, face-to-face time with the people they work with.  It's commonly known but something that I find people are rarely purposeful about at work.

"To make the human moment work, you have to set aside what you’re doing, put down the memo you were reading, disengage from your laptop, abandon your daydream, and focus on the person you’re with. 

Usually when you do that, the other person will feel the energy and respond in kind.  Together, you quickly create a force field of exceptional power."

You probably did this a few times today, but it's a good reminder that these daily interactions, that coffee, that roll over to your colleague's desk really mattered.

The happy secret

Want to increase sales by 37%?  Start a gratitude journal.

Okay that's not really the point, but I want to hook you into this TED talk which was exactly the 12 minutes I needed to see today.  Shawn Achor speaks on his study of 'positive outliers' (i.e. people considered well above average) and his findings on how happiness impacts our success.  Moreover, the talk itself is laugh out loud funny as it puts research behind why guarding your happiness is advantageous.

I can't get the smile off my face.  Happy Monday!

Sunday links

Organic chocolate high tea at Coco chocolate (yes, okay that is the last of my birthday celebrations).

Wow so I'm getting pretty good at only updating this on Sundays.

With the weather edging closer to winter with each passing day I've really been getting into elaborate toast toppings, because toast is comfort food with minimal effort.  I also can't believe I never thought of this edamame and goats cheese combo before.

Work has been tough of late, good fuel for the week is knowing 'controlled experiments suggest that optimism is not only related to success, it leads to success'.

Or if it all gets too much, here's proof you can move to Paris without any compelling reason, except for the fact that it's Paris.