CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

The end of the year is coming...

Soon it'll be Christmas time, and in the twinkling of an eye 2015 will be over.

Copyright LuxuryDesign.com

This time of year is often a time of getting an overview of our entire year, analyzing what we've done, what we haven't, what changed into our lives, what we still have to work on and so on.

For those who'd like to do so, I made out a quick list of what can be done to improve and/or make our daily routines funnier and nicer, and give priceless gifts that bring joy and warm our hearts:

- Be grateful: 

Choose a jar or a box, put colorful post-it notes next to it with a pen 

Write on a note something you are grateful for, everyday, several times a day if you want to (it can be the "smallest" thing like "I'm thankful for the sun shining this morning") and put into the jar

Offer people who come to visit to do so

Read them after a month (for example) and start over

It will help you appreciate the beauty of the world and realize that you have wonderful thing into your life.

- Smile:

Even if you're busy, preoccupied, stressed out or tracked by your daily routine with no time to raise your head, smile to people. When you enter into a store, when you bump into someone in the street, when you catch someone's eye, when a member of your family comes back home after his/her day of work, whenever you can.

We don't smile enough.

Plus, smiling even if we don't really feel like smiling contracts the face muscles that work when we laugh, so it stimulates the same areas in our brain and secretes the hormones of pleasure. We'll therefor feel better and happier.

- Compliment:

Tell people you know sincere compliments (whether they're family, friends or acquaintances). Tell them somthing you really appreciate about them, about their personality, their character. It'll feel good to them and good to you. And it will probably make it easier for them to do so in the future.

I hope you'll have a great time trying these positive things !

CLEAN OCEANS

SEABIN PROJECT

Two sea lovers guys launched an amazing project to clean oceans: a bin that swallows water, catching everything floatting in it. Platic bottles, paper, oils, detergents, ffuel... everything we can find in the sea when we want to go for a swim that has nothing to do here.

It works very simply, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.

You can follow them HERE.

They quit their jobs to invest all of their time and money in this project, to make it grow everyday, and develop it worldwide.
To do so, they need our help, and we can invest any amount of money in their project on this page RIGHT HERE and discover more about them and the whole project.

A great opportunity to contribute to change and to start acting for our planet and preserve its wealth !

PARIS MON AMOUR

I am speechless..
I don't know if the date of 11-13-15 means something like "friday 13th is always good/bad luck" and I don't care.
I'm still really shocked but I want to write something... Even if emotions and words to describe them are mixing in my head again and again.
The only thing I know is that we're definitely living in a crazy world, going in the wrong direction.

I was moved to see how many people support France on social networks.
The example of changing Facebook profile pictures sounds like a good one to me. I asked myself that question "am I changing it because it happened in my country and my beloved town Paris ?" - No, I'm doing it because we're all involved. All in the same boat. No matter the country, innocent citizens lose their life everyday. No human being is supposed to be killed. No one, nowhere.

Friday night, my motherland shivered, trembled. The streets and places I used to go to and hang out with friends became horrifying crime scenes.
Friday night, all the reasons why I'm in love with Paris, its freedom, its lifestyle, are the reasons why people died. We cannot accept it.
Yes, our turn is apparently officially up. I want to say "again". Charlie Hebdo's symbol ain't the problem anymore. Being French is the one and we all become potential victims.
Victims of absurd ideologies. So are millions of people in their own country. My French flag on Facebook means "we're living and sharing the horror that people live abroad, and in the name of my homeland I support people living these barbaric acts whenever and wherever they occur".

I wonder how and why we got here... But the thing is: we're living in a world of incomprehension and fear. And it has to stop.
I'm sad and deeply touched and moved. Everyday I wake up hoping for a better world, and even if it really hearts and makes me sad, I will not let this kind of events break my faith.
We are a nation, we are strong, and we will fight for peace on earth. May French people stand up, be proud and never give up. As all the nations fighting for peace on earth.

Today we pray for Paris

Everyday we do for Peace. 

GLUTEN FREE PASTA

Here's a little pasta recipe
Very easy
Very yummy
Gluten-free

Ingredients:

- Eggplants
(that aren't too big so you can cut quite small slices)
- Parmesan
- Eggs
- Pasta (GF)
- Oregano
- Lemon juice
or
- Tomato-basil (organic) sauce
for those who wouldn't like the lemon/parmesan sauce



Instructions:

Slice the eggplants
Put them into the frying pan on a low heat so they can get softer
Then put them all on a plate
Whip an egg in a bowl, and pour Parmesan in another
Dunk eggplant's slices into the egg, then into Parmesan
Put them into the frying pan (medium heat)
Fry til golden on the either sides

Mix oregano, basil and lemon juice in a bowl, then add Parseman and keep mixing until it gets homogeneous.

When your pasta is cooked, add the sauce (whether it's lemon or tomato-basil) and the eggplants on top of it.

Hope you'll enjoy it !

MINDFULNESS TIPS

Results and benefits of mindfulness have been scientifically proved. And even if we still need more researches into this field, it's interesting to know what changes it can bring into our body and our brain.

To name a few: 

- improves memory

- improves concentration

- reduces agressive behaviors

- reduces anxiety

- reduces chronic depression symptoms

...

Summer 2015, Provence, France

To facilitate our mindulness practice, we can get "helped" by a clock on our watch, our computer or whatever to remind us we have to take a break to meditate and recenter on the here and now. It can be during lunch time, or a break during the day, or when we're back home after work.
It helps us get more concentrated and relaxed.

We can also usefully get helped by our smartphone installing an app that offers exercices of mindfulness and meditation, and that shows us our evolution.

I recently bought the app Zenfie and it's a really good one. You take your time, every day, to meditate and be more mindful. They guide you step by step and it makes everything easier. Even if the session only lasts 10 or 12 minutes, you really feel peaceful afterward. And that's what really counts. You can try longer sessions when you feel you need it. 

Only 20 minutes meditation a day have been proved to be very efficient on our brain, so you can take it easy.

Because we'd probably like to be more mindful all day long, we can try mindful eating on each or one of the daily meals.
Take the time to smell, to look at our food, to chew it and really taste it. We can analyze all the flavors of our food, think about how it feels in our stomach, and take time before the next bite.

We can also share this experience with someone, parents, siblings, boy/girlfriend, friends... 

If they are not practising too, we can only tell them what we experience, the changes we noticed, how we feel. Maybe they'll try it too and telling them will not be our only motivation but sharing will too !

And if we feel like we can't handle this daily exercise alone, maybe we can join a meditation group or meditation-based yoga activity.

Remember: it doesn't matter if we miss 1, 2 or 5 days. The most important thing is to keep it in mind and not to be afraid to start over again.

MINDFUL WHAT ?

Today I'm going to introduce you the concept of mindfulness.

I knew it, or at least I know what it was about because some of my mom's personal development books gave me hints.

But I really started getting it when I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (2001), at a time in my life I needed to simply live presently and enjoy.

Mindfulness is - in its simpler way - moment to moment awareness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn* says “It’s not really about sitting in the full lotus, like pretending you’re a statue in a British museum”.

He defines mindfulness as something that "is cultivated by purposefully paying attention to things we ordinarily never give a moment’s thought to. It is a systematic approach to developing new kinds of control and wisdom in our lives.” 

But why would we be more mindful ? what can we do to be more mindful ?

Well, we probably need to be more mindful because our past experiences have marked our life, our interactions with people and the events we are experiencing - even the simplest of them -  are marking our everyday life. And our future, because of its uncertainty - can scare us or stress us out.
Our mind is caught up by all those things.
We do not always know how to deal with these feelings, and to feel good anyway. Because we are stuck into the past (whether it's far away or pretty close) or anticipating the future. Caught up with our emotions and feelings.
It's like we had a bunch of keys to open a door but we have no idea which one is the right one.
Well we can say Mindfulness is one of them.

January 2015, Sri Lanka

So we can start taking a very deep breath, and then to focus on something.
The aim is to concentrate on the here and now, when our body and mind are here together.

To do so, we can focus on our breath. Be mindful that our breathing in is an in-breath and that our breathing out is an out-breath. It might seem silly, but let's try it.
We'll realize our mental discourse will just stop while we are doing those things. Of course, some thoughts come to our mind, we don't have to chase them or get interested, we just have to let them pass and go, and feel that we're here and now.
That's being mindful.
Plus, breathing is very good for relaxing tensions (in our body and mind) and to think clearly and keep calm in lousy/overwhelming/stressful situations.

I hope you'll give it a try because it's a very easy and funny exercice, and the result is just feeling good so that's pretty cool !
I'll give other tips and practices within the next days/weeks.

Have fun !

DARE TO DREAM

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" -- Gandhi

Yesterday night I attended a conference (lead by Carlos Hue Garcia) on Emotional Intelligence.

I thought it'd be interesting to share it with you.

There are a lot of things to say about emotional intelligence, personal development, but let's make a long story short.

Life is shitty. It's tough. But if we can get the emotional skills to get a better understanding of our emotions, our thoughts, our dreams, if we're capable of empathy and learn to get the best out of people we're related to, life can be a wonderful journey.

Here's a video we wtached during the conference:

Copyright Inknowation -- Youtube

However, to know who we truly are, what we truly want, we have to challenge ourselves and go out of our comfort zone (as shown in the video).

It's essential to think positive for ourselves and for others. We need to constantly remind that whatever happens we are worth 10, our sister is worth 10, our neighbor is worth 10, our doctor's worth 10, everybody is worth 10. Even a serial-killer or a thief. The person is worth 10. Not his behaviour. It's important to distinguish both.

It's easy to compare with others and to say "Look, how lucky he/she is ! Great things happen to him/her !". Well you don't know how hard they've been working for it and/or the path they've taken and the difficulties they've been through.

Instead of this, we should be happy for them but also get kicked to move forward. Nobody's going to do the work for us. If you want something, work for it. If you want to be happy, start smiling. Remember that "if you squeeze lemon, you'll get lemonade." 

Self-knowledge, self-esteem, motivation (innovate, invent, investigate), knowledge of others, empathy, valorization of others and entrepreneur leadership are the key concepts to achieve goals and feel good and happy in life.

If we want to see changes in this world, we have to change ourselves, then we'll obviously change the world.