“Just be yourself,” you’ve heard, time and time again. But what does that really mean? In order to be yourself, you have to know what a “yourself” is, right? What if you feel like you’ve lost yourself? Or don’t like yourself?

Well, here are some words of wisdom from the masters, who have thought long and hard on this matter:

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.  ~e.e. cummings, 1955

He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.  ~Raymond Hull

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.  ~William Shakespeare

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.  I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.  I was naïve.  I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.  It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with:  that I am nobody but myself.  ~Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal”

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.  ~James Matthew Barrie

Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.  ~Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.  ~Judy Garland

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.  ~David Carradine

A man who is “of sound mind” is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.  ~Paul Valéry, Mauvaises pensées et autres, 1942

I am told to just be myself, but as much as I have practiced the impression, I am still no good at it.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity.  Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune.  ~Boris Pasternak

Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.  ~Shakti Gawain

Creative potential abounds, even in the most unlikely situations. One would think a boy with a terminal illness would not have the energy, let alone the know-how, to produce such sophisticated and impressive artwork. It reminds us: we are all creative. Convince yourself otherwise and you won’t produce. Allow your inner child to express and you may have the next Picasso:

A terminally ill boy who was not expected to live past six-months-old, has stunned doctors by surviving and holding his own art exhibition.

Leo Haines, aged five, was born with cerebral palsy and a terminal condition affecting his lungs and heart.

Doctors told his mother Marianna Haines, 26, that little Leo would die in his first year. But his fighting spirit saw him through and after spending his first brithday in hospital, Leo was able to move home.

The talented young artist, from Taunton Somerset, England, began painting alongside his grandmother Marianna Thomas, who quickly recognised his talent.

Leo now has 40 unique works, reminiscent of the American abstract artist Jackson Pollock, featuring in their very own art exhibition where they are being sold for charity.

His grandfather, Brian Thomas, 59, said: ‘My wife, his grandmother, is a well-known local artist and it started with Leo joining in, basically uninvited, into her work.

‘So she used to get him a canvas and set him up with paints on the floor and it just went from there.

Artistic Leo, pictured here aged 3, is able to concentrate on his work for over an hour at a time

‘It began by getting him to recognise different colours and mixtures and shapes. Now it is his favourite pastime.

‘I suppose you’d call them impressionism - they’re definitely inspired by his choice of colours, and I think he’s got a very good choice in colours.

‘And they’re really quite good. The first day of the exhibition a man came in and got halfway down the wall and turned to me and asked, ‘Are you Leo?’ - quite seriously.

‘He thought they’d been painted by an adult, and I pointed him to the other wall which tells Leo’s story. He immediately bought a painting. We’ve got about 40 in the exhibition, and they represent two years of Leo’s work.’

Leo was born with cerebral palsy and terminal pulmonary vein stenosis, a condition that means the veins running from his heart to his lungs will become eventually blocked, killing him.

Doctors told his mother, a care assistant from Taunton, Somerset, he was unlikely to survive past six months old, and in the first year of his life Leo’s family was told nine times to prepare for the worst.

But Leo, who suffers from intermittent deafness, battled through and eventually moved home, where he developed a fascination for art as part of therapy to help him communicate.

Now he creates dazzling abstract works full of feeling with sweeping colours on black backgrounds.

Leo’s grandfather, a retired electronics and communications worker, added: ‘Amongst his biggest problems is the ability to communicate because he has cerebral palsy.

Little Leo’s work has been likened to Jackson Pollock’s paintings such as ‘Number 17, 1949′ pictured

‘One of the ways we actually got him to communicate is through activities - painting is one of those things that he can do.

‘My wife’s taught him a sort-of no boundaries approach. It has been great for Leo - it’s got him communicating. He has at least three sessions a week, and in the winter four or five.

‘Some children of his age would not concentrate for more than 15 minutes, but he loves painting so much he can be absorbed for an hour and a half.’

Source: Daily Mail UK

Here at Only Positive News, we’ve talked about forgiveness a lot - and it’s for a good reason. Many people get stuck in a state of anger and pain in their lives. It’s hard to see the positive when you feel mired in the negative.

These techniques are deceptively simple but I like them for just that reason. Sometimes forgiveness is simpler than we think. Or we forget that there are actually techniques that can help us move forward today.

1. Allow yourself to experience anger, but don’t hold onto it for months or years on end. When the anger starts to consume you, you’ve held onto it for too long.
2. Express your feelings in a positive way through writing a journal or talking to a professional, close friend or family member who can help you make sense of the situation.
3. Try to step into the shoes of those who hurt you in hopes you’ll see the situation from their perspective.
4. Write a letter about your feelings to the people who hurt you. Using “I feel” or “I felt” are productive ways to start sentences.
5. Most importantly, have patience with yourself: “Remember, forgiveness doesn’t have to happen in a day.”

Like the simple but effective yogic advice to “be kind, starting with yourself,” we can always benefit from being reminded of these basic, healthy premises.

Source: YourTango.com

Ah, that elusive idea…finding yourself. As if you’ve lost yourself in some cosmic game of hid and seek and you are both the seeker and the hider…or something like that!

These quotes will remind you that finding yourself is at once easy yet seemingly impossible at times.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself.  But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.  ~Thomas Szasz, “Personal Conduct,” The Second Sin, 1973

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself.  ~Alan Alda

Never mind searching for who you are.  Search for the person you aspire to be.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.  ~Dr. Alexis Carrel

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.  ~Julien Green

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.  ~Anaïs Nin

The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.  ~Richard Grant

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

All men should strive
to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
~James Thurber

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.  ~Michel de Montaigne

If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.  ~Author Unknown

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  ~Henry David Thoreau, 1854

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.  ~George Moore

It is good to feel lost… because it proves you have a navigational sense of where “Home” is.  You know that a place that feels like being found exists.  And maybe your current location isn’t that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it.  ~Erika Harris, lifeblazing.com

You might be experiencing it as you read this (though I hope not!) Boredom is so commonplace that we don’t think of it as a mental state from which can learn. But there’s a way to embrace boredom, even grow from it. And what better way to start the week (Mondays can be notoriously boring!) then with some tips on how to use boredom to your advantage!

This is from The Happiness Project, a blog we’ve referred to several times on Only Positive News. Check out the site when you get a moment!

One “little thing” that can be a source of unhappiness is boredom. Sitting in traffic. Doing laundry. Waiting in a long line at the grocery store.

I’ve found that the more I focus on my boredom or irritation, the more I amplify that feeling. Here are six strategies I use to “re-frame” the moment; even if I can’t escape a situation, by re-framing my emotions about it, I can transform it.

– Put the word “meditation” after the activity that’s boring you. (This is my invention.) If you’re standing in a slow line at the drugstore, you’re doing “Waiting in line meditation.” If you’re cleaning up after a party, you’re doing “Cleaning meditation.” Just saying these words makes me feel very spiritual and high-minded and wise.

-– Dig in. Diane Arbus wrote, “The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it’s true.” If something is boring for two minutes, do it for four minutes. If it’s still boring, do it for eight minutes, then sixteen, and so on. Eventually you discover that it’s not boring at all.

In my life, I’ve found that if part of my research isn’t interesting to me — for example, studying the Dardanelles campaign for Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill — I read a whole book about it, and then it becomes absorbing. The same principle holds when doing boring or irritating tasks, like washing dishes.

– Take the perspective of a journalist or scientist. Really study what’s around you. What are people wearing, what do the interiors of buildings look like, what noises do you hear? If you bring your analytical powers to bear, you can make almost anything interesting.

– Find an area of refuge. Have a mental escape route planned. Think about something delightful or uplifting (not your to-do list!). Or maybe review photos of your kids on your phone; studies show that looking at photos of loved ones provides a big mood boost.

– Take your time. I realize that when information bores me, like trying to understand a change-of-service notice from the cable company, I try to rush through it. This makes things worse, though, not better, because I feel not only bored, but also impatient and confused. Now, when I have to make sense of something that’s both boring and bewildering, I deliberately slow myself down and take all the time I need. My resolution to Put myself in jail is helpful.

– Most important: always have something good to read!

How about you? Have you found strategies to deal with boredom?

It’s grey and chilly where I am today. A good day for being wrapped up in an old, comfy sweater and sipping tea. It’s also a good time to meditate on deeper thoughts. So for Positive Quote Wednesday, I’m offering up some sayings that make you say, “Hmmmm….”

The day was counting up its birds and never got the answer right.  ~Author Unknown

And upsidedown in the earth a dead man walks upon my soles when I walk.  ~Bill Knott, “(End) of Summer (1966)”

Night and morning are making promises to each other which neither will be able to keep.  ~Richard Shelton

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.  ~e.e. cummings

Ink smears, as thoughts sometimes do.  ~Terri Guillemets

Never mind.  The self is the least of it.  Let our scars fall in love.  ~Galway Kinnell

Her hearing was keener than his, and she heard silences he was unaware of.  ~D.M. Thomas

Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.  ~Jean Cocteau

We are asleep with compasses in our hands.  ~W.S. Merwin

If only I could leave everything as it is, without moving a single star or a single cloud.  Oh, if only I could!  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Sharp nostalgia, infinite and terrible, for what I already possess.  ~Juan Ramon Jimenez

[T]he departing world leaves behind… not an heir, but a pregnant widow.  ~Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, Other Shore

Two and two the mathematician continues to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.  ~James McNeill Whistler, Whistler Versus Ruskin, 1878

We are never prepared for what we expect.  ~James A. Michener, Caravans

The universe is simmering down, like a giant stew left to cook for four billion years.  Sooner or later we won’t be able to tell the carrots from the onions.  ~Arthur Bloch<!–, in The World within the World by John D. Barrow, 1988, SS–>

As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish, I wish he’d go away.
~Hugh Mearns

It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe.  Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in retreat.  ~Loren Eiseley, “The Innocent Fox,” The Star Thrower, 1978

We have met the enemy and they are us!  ~Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1971

Our dream dashes itself against the great mystery like a wasp against a window pane.  Less merciful than man, God never opens the window.  ~Jules Renard, Journal, 1906

Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.  ~William Wordsworth

All that we know is nothing, we are merely crammed waste-paper baskets, unless we are in touch with that which laughs at all our knowing.  ~D.H. Lawrence, “Peace and War,” Pansies, 1929

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~T.S. Eliot, 1943

The beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become transparent.  ~Thomas Carlyle

I just read this great article/review from Josey Vogels that I wanted to share with you. It’s about properly grieving the end of a relationship in order to move forward, baggage-free:

“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

“Time heals all wounds.”

“Get over it.”

You’ve heard ‘em all right? Russell Friedman and John W. James say jaunty phrases like these are the worst words of advice for handling a breakup. “The attempt to soothe is always well intentioned but rarely helpful,” say the authors of Moving On: Dump Your Relationship Baggage and Make Room for the Love of Your Life.

Despite its oh-god-not-another-one-of-those-books title, this is one of the best relationship books to have crossed my desk in a while (and trust me, a lot of them cross my desk).

Rather than spend a lot of time splicing, dicing and trying to spice up the failing relationships we’re currently in, Friedman and James, founders of the Grief Recovery Institute have applied techniques they’ve used to help clients deal with death to help people deal with the one thing they rarely do when they enter into a new relationship: That is, properly say good-bye to all the other crappy relationships that have gone before.

“A breakup is the death of a relationship,” says Friedman. “And just as when someone dies, you’re suddenly robbed of all the hopes, dreams and expectations you had for the future with that person.” Then we drag all that disappointment, anger and resentment (because of course, the relationship death was all the other’s person’s, right?) into our next relationship. After a few rounds of this, it’s no wonder so many of us can’t make the damn things work. In fact, says Friedman, the 50% divorce rate is nothing compared to the 70 per cent of relationships that fail outside of marriage.

Friedman and James partly blame our society’s discomfort with feelings of sadness.“By the time a child is 15 years old he or she will have received more than 23 thousand messages that sad or painful feelings should not be communicated to others,” they write.

Pet fish dies? Don’t worry honey, there are plenty more fish in the, er, pet fish store. Hurt son? Suck it up and get over it. All that stuff we learn about feeling bad or sad gets packed into the suitcase and hauled into adulthood and into our relationships.

Relationship ends? Don’t worry; you can get a new one. Heart hurtin’ like someone’s shoved it full of broken glass? Suck it up and get over it.

But the new fish/relationship isn’t a replacement for the old one, say the authors. Relationships aren’t replaceable or interchangeable. Each is unique and need to be experienced, completed and mourned differently.

And that old, “time heals all” bit? Friedman and James liken this advice to expecting time to fill a flat tire with air. To take the analogy further, imagine you continue driving on that flat tire while you’re waiting for time to fill it up again. It would make driving in a straight line really hard and eventually, you’d destroy the rim and the wheel.

So just like you need to take action to fill up your tire before you can more forward (like call a tow truck or use a jack and fix it yourself), we need to take action in order to refill our emotional flat tires and move forward into healthier, happier relationships.

The action the authors suggest is something they call the “past relationship review,” an exercise that forces you to formally review past relationships and be honest with yourself about the good, the bad and the ugly of each one. But the process isn’t just an intellectual one. “We know people who can recite a doctoral thesis on what happened and who did what to whom but still aren’t emotionally complete,” says Friedman.

Their suggested process, if done honestly and openly, allows you to “complete” past relationships by forgiving your exes for their shit and apologizing for your own so you don’t end up dragging all that “unfinished emotional business” into subsequent relationships.

But he was a bastard and I’ll never be able to forgive him, you say. Forgiving doesn’t condone the person’s behaviour, says Friedman. Not forgiving, however, makes it impossible to move on. “Not forgiving keeps you in prison and not them,” he says.

In fact, forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. “It’s only for you, to set you free,” says Friedman.

Which is why the authors are so adamant about the fact that none of this process be shared with your exes. They mean it. This is strictly a personal exercise. Suddenly calling him up to tell him you forgive him for being such a jerk isn’t going to inflate anyone’s tires.

Friedman likens the process to scraping old paint off a house to prepare it for a fresh coat.

And, once you’re ready for it, they’ve got some great advice for making that fresh coat last.

For more info or to order the book, go to relationshipbaggage.com.

This story gives new meaning to women reaching new heights…quite literally!

Congress is awarding the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor, to members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a civilian branch of the Army Air Force. Fewer than 300 of the 1,100 survive. Relatives of those who have died or could not attend will also get medals.

When Jean Springer (above) joined, “it was kind of a lark,” she says. She had been taking flying lessons. “It was patriotic. And boring at home. I loved flying.”

The WASP was created to allow more male pilots to go to the war front.

Prohibited from flying in combat, the female pilots transported military personnel, towed targets for gunnery practice and shuttled planes from factories to bases.

They flew every military plane model flown in the war.

“Sometimes the guys who gave us weather predictions in the morning when we left weren’t particularly accurate,” Springer says. “In snowstorms, it was scary.”

Yet no military honors were granted to the 38 women who were killed during service to the program.

In December 1944, as the war was ending and male pilots were coming home, the program was disbanded.

“One day I came back from a flight,” says Doris Nathan, 93, of Kalamazoo, Mich. “And the commanding officer said, ‘I just got orders to tell you to get off the base by tomorrow morning.’ ”

Some of the women kept flying as instructors in Florida or bush pilots in Alaska, says Albert “Chig” Lewis, a Washington lawyer and founding member of Wingtip to Wingtip, an association that promotes the fliers’ legacy. His mother was a WASP. Others raised families and accepted that most of the nation didn’t know what they’d done.

The fliers were already trying to gain recognition as military veterans in 1976 when the Air Force announced that “for the first time ever” it would teach women to fly military airplanes, says Kate Landdeck, an associate professor of history at Texas Woman’s University who is writing a book about WASPs and their lives after the war.

“They realized their Air Force had forgotten about them,” Landdeck says.

In 1977, after a “huge effort in Congress” and with the help of Sen. Barry Goldwater, who had flown with WASPs during the war, the women were recognized as military personnel and given partial veterans benefits.

“They get to go to VA hospitals, and they get that flag on the coffin,” she says. “That’s the most important thing to them.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, co-sponsored the bill to honor the women with the medal.

“These women have yet to receive the recognition they deserve,” Hutchison says.

Source: USA Today

That’s right - after years of debating and in-house feuding, the United States of America has passed a healthcare reform:

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to pass a landmark healthcare reform bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Under the legislation, health insurance will be extended to nearly all Americans, imposes new taxes on the wealthy and bars restrictive insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

They represent the biggest change in the US healthcare system since the creation in the 1960s of Medicare, the government-run scheme for Americans aged 65 or over.

President Barack Obama:

“It’s a victory for the American people.”

Damn straight.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Source: BBC News

With Spring right around the corner (insert huge sigh of relief), it’s time to “green” your life. This could mean many things: a good spring cleaning, planting your garden, some new clothes, an exercise plan - anything that brings you back to life after a long winter!

Here’s a few Spring suggestions you may want to take into consideration:

Check out these tips from a Gimundo article:

1. This year I’m eliminating any chemicals from my garden and planting all organic plants. It’s a little more expensive and a little harder to find, but it’s a lot healthier for your kids if they play in your yard to get rid of those awful fertilizers full of chemicals.

2. My spring cleaning will be done with lots of vinegar, baking soda and plant derived cleaners. Get rid of those old cleaners that are made with petrochemicals, unnatural fragrances and use products that bring a healthier environment to your home. Did you know that your indoor air could be causing health issues to you and your family?

3. Open your windows and let the fresh air in. Wash your windows with a mixture of half vinegar and half water, usually this will improve your indoor air quality and leave your windows spotless.

4. Is it time to clean out a few clogged drains? Here are some helpful tips for a more natural way to clean drains. Throw away those chemicals; they go straight to our water supply.

5. Time to go green with your hot water heater; your water heater uses a lot of energy to keep water hot 24/7. Check out tankless water heaters or called hot water on demand systems.

Source: Gimundo

Here are a few others I came up with:

6. If you’re in need of new clothes for the Spring, check out your local second-hand store or Salvation Army first. Not only are you saving money, you’re “precycling.”

7. Fix up your bike. A bike that’s had a little tune-up is more likely to be used. Put it in an easy, accessible place. Remind yourself that it’s time to get on the bike and not hop in the car. Put a basket on your bike for even more flexibility.

8. Back to the washing machine: most clothing does not need tons of detergent or hot water. Move over to eco-friendly detergent, use less of it and use cold water.