Your Soul Food for Friday August 5th 2016: Puns, Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself, Positive Attitudes, Healing Divides, Beautiful Places, Crazy Dogs and Success Conferences

Happy Soul Food Friday!

In a democracy it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism it’s your count that votes

This week:

Puns for Educated Minds
Stop Being So Hard on Yourself!
The Power of a Positive Attitude
Healing Racial Divides and Building Resilience
California’s Most Beautiful Places

A Crazy Dog Vid:

If You Are Local…

Mana Latina Success Conference Oct 15^th 2016

Puns for Educated Minds:

The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

She was only a whisky-maker but he loved her still.

A rubber-band pistol was confiscated from a geometry class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

A hole has been found in the nudist-camp wall. The police are looking into it.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: “You stay here; I’ll go on a head.”

I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab centre said: “Keep off the Grass.”

15. The midget fortune teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

A backward poet writes inverse.

In a democracy it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism it’s your count that votes.

When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

If you jumped off the bridge in Paris , you’d be in Seine .

A vulture carrying two dead raccoons boards an airplane. The stewardess looks at him and says, “I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”

Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says, “Dam!”

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, “I’ve lost my electron.” The other says, “Are you sure?” The first replies, “Yes, I’m positive.”

25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root-canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

There was the person who sent ten puns to friends with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Stop Being So Hard on Yourself:

I hope you’re having a good week so far.
The topic today is a common way to get things done, to achieve and to motivate yourself.
But it also comes at a price. It can tear yourself-esteem down. Suck the fun and excitement out of things and make you perform worse and worse over time.
So what can you do if you want to stop being so hard on yourself?
Well, three things that have helped me to do that are…

1. Remind yourself of the negative effects of this attitude.
To just remind yourself of how damaging being hard on yourself has been is in my experience a very effective way to replace the old habit with going easier on yourself.

2. Go for more human and smarter standards for yourself.
Movies, books and the people around you may push standards on you that are just pure fantasy or some kind of perfect dream.
But life is life, not a fantasy or dream and to set such extremely high standards that no one can live up to just leads to what you may see as failure and disappointment in yourself and in your life.
Instead, relax a bit and accept that everything and everyone has flaws and things don’t always go as planned.
Accept that you can still improve things but they will never be perfect.
And realize that you won’t be rejected if things or you aren’t perfect. At least not by reasonably well-balanced human beings, like most people actually are in reality.

3. Focus on the positive and helpful feedback in setbacks.
It’s very common to be hard on yourself when you make a mistake or fail.
But it is also a very destructive habit because it can magnify one such event into something that makes you feel depressed for weeks or makes you quit altogether.
So when you are hard on yourself for a failure or mistake then relax a bit and go a bit easier on yourself. Remind yourself of why this is a much better strategy to keep the motivation and self-esteem up.

And ask yourself:
What is one thing I can I learn from this situation?
How can I use what I learn from this to not make the same mistake again and to move forward in a better and smarter way?
Have a self-kind week and joyous summer!

The Power of a Positive Attitude:

Healing Racial Divides and Building Resilience

As we mourn so many deaths recently, President Obama reminded the nation that we should live up to our highest ideals, have an open heart with one another, learn to stand in each other’s shoes and see the world through each other’s eyes.

How do we systematically develop that sense of interdependence and interconnectedness?
How do we heal deep racial divides and trauma that have been passed on for generations?

We know that if we want our communities to be peaceful and loving and empathetic, each one of us has to find peace, love, and empathy within ourselves.
Chronic stress is a common denominator among everyone involved in the recent killings across the nation. For example, we know that just as inner-city residents are chronically stressed, so are inner-city police officers. The more stressed we are, the lesser our ability to pay attention, regulate our emotions, and feel empathy.

Inattention is the difference between seeing and perceiving, and that difference (reaching for a wallet or a gun), as we have seen, can be a matter of life and death.
Emotion regulation is the difference between reacting and consciously choosing an optimal response, and that difference (relaxed and alert, or angry and afraid), as we have seen, can be a matter of life and death.
Lack of empathy is the difference between feeling separate and feeling interconnected, and that difference (us versus them), as we have seen, can be a matter of life and death.

Practices, such as Dynamic Mindfulness or mindful movement, done regularly, develop our capacity for resilience in the face of chronic stress and trauma. These tools are for all of us – everyday citizens and police officers, parents and children, teachers and students. These practices compliment, enhance and enable all our efforts at system change.
It is time to come together as community members, neighbors and families. In the face of chronic stress and trauma, let’s practice the transformative life skills available to us, to help us become more resilient. Empathy and compassion for others will abound in communities that are resilient. It is on us to live up to our highest ideals, and empower others to do the same.
In Peace,
BK and all staff at Niroga

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