This lovely story was found on Gimundo, another fantastic positive news website:

The day before Thanksgiving, Lucy Crutchfield left a message on her daughter’s answering machine. The despair was evident in her voice.

Crutchfield owed a mortgage payment on her home, but her daughter wasn’t even able to afford food for the coming week. So, Crutchfield left a message saying that she would send money for the groceries—even though that meant she wouldn’t have enough to pay her monthly mortgage bill.

But as it turned out, Crutchfield had dialed a wrong number, leaving her heartbreaking message on a stranger’s machine.

Instead of simply deleting the message, the stranger on the other end, San Diego real estate agent Virginia Saenz, decided to call her back.

“On the phone, she sounded so desperate for her daughter, it broke my heart,” Saenz told NBC San Diego.

When she reached Crutchfield, she told her not to worry. Saenz would help out Crutchfield’s daughter, so that Crutchfield could still make her mortgage payment.

Lucy Crutchfield was blown away by the stranger’s generosity—and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Times were very tough, and she’d recently gone into foreclosure on her own home. The mortgage payment was for her mother’s house. Her mother had recently passed away, and Crutchfield was struggling to stay on top of her debts, too. “I thought I was going to lose that house, too,” she said.

Thanks to Saenz’s offer, she was able to make that payment, while Saenz went to the grocery store to pick up food for Crutchfield’s daughter’s family. Crutchfield’s daughter said she only needed milk and eggs, but Saenz decided to go on a shopping spree for the family, picking up enough food for the rest of the month, plus a turkey, stuffing, and all the trimmings to make a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.

The next day, while sitting down to her own Thanksgiving dinner, Saenz gave thanks for the fact that she was able to provide help to a stranger in need. That random act of kindness “made the day special for me,” she said.

I just returned from my high school graduation and boy, my head was spinning! It’s so strange and wonderful to see so many familiar faces. Yet also emotionally evocative. It’s as if you’re beemed back in time and relive and re-experience feelings of yesterday. - no easy emotional task.

So what did I do to process it? Simple. I went for one of my “power walks.” Now, I’m not talking about power walking in the traditional exercise sense. It was a spiritual power walk.

The air was cold and brisk, the winter sun shining brightly. As I walked, I kept an intention in mind: clear your head, let the thoughts blow away in the cold breeze, breathe, enjoy the now.

Simple, right? For me, this “power walk” helped me mentally digest a busy weekend, regroup and return to myself.

So the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed (especially as the holiday season approaches!), never underestimate the power of a good walk!

Walk your Mind Away

An interesting story of an artist who finds that paint no longer works for him:

Artist Federico Uribe was born in Bogata, Colombia in 1962, then moved to Cuba, Mexico, Great Britain, and his present location - Miami. By abandoning the traditional medium of paint and using common objects in new ways, he feels he creates works that “communicate joy, beauty and love,” according to his website. View a slideshow of his art: today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40025950

Amazing art on a shoestring At first glance these colorful pictures look like regular paintings -- but closer inspection reveals the detailed artwork is made from shoelaces that are painstakingly arranged and pinned to the canvas. The stunningly intricate creations are the work of Colombian artist Federico Uribe. This portait of a man with a sunflower, "Ars Poetica," is Uribe's personal favorite.

Source: Happy News

Today, I’ve decided to find “across the board” good, instructional life quotes. I think we could all stand to benefit from that knowledge…”catch all” quotes, if you will!

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.  ~Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, c.1420

You’ve got a lot of choices.  If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you’re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.  ~Steven D. Woodhull

What saves a man is to take a step.  Then another step.  It is always the same step, but you have to take it.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

Remember, if you’re headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns!  ~Allison Gappa Bottke

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.  ~Jim Rohn

In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.  ~Liz Armbruster

See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little.  ~Pope John XXIII

Give thanks for what you are now, and keep fighting for what you want to be tomorrow.  ~Fernanda Miramontes-Landeros

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

Now that it’s all over, what did you really do yesterday that’s worth mentioning?  ~Coleman Cox

Be kind to your shadow.  ~Rebecca Lawless

Robert Louis Stevenson

My friend had told me about a particularly stressful work meeting she had. She found herself reacting, instead of thinking before speaking. It got me thinking: What are some techniques to diffuse a tense situation? I found this:

1 - Freeze. Whenever you find yourself faced with a potentially tense situation, be it someone is growing angry with you, or you’re part of a group where things are spiraling out of control; the first thing you need to do is freeze. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Simply halt whatever it is you’re doing. Any actions you take or words you speak will be nothing but a gut reaction to the situation at hand. Neither will generally make the situation better.

2 - Think. Once you’ve frozen yourself, start thinking about the situation. What’s causing the situation to be tense? What part have you played? What are the implications for any words you may say, or actions you may take? How important is it that you deal with the situation at all? Is it possible you could simply walk away? Think about the whole situation. Think about how you might reduce the tension without coming off as weak. Think about what someone with a level head might do. In short, give yourself time to think the whole thing over before you do or say anything.

3 - Examine. Mentally list all of the options you’ve thought about. Do this logically, pushing your emotions aside. Things will almost always work out better for you if you consider your options in a clear light. Discard any options that you know in your heart will only add fuel to the fire. Think about all your options.

4 - Decide. Once you’ve thought about the situation logically, choose among the options that will create the best outcome for you. It’s important that your decision is based on what you believe is best for you,

5 - Act. Finally, once you’ve made up your mind as to what to do about the situation, act on it. Do whatever it is you’ve decided to do; whether it’s confronting someone, trying to find some middle ground, or walking away. Don’t let other’s sway you, and don’t second guess what you’v decided to go. Stick with it and things will almost work out better than if you’d simply reacted out of anger or frustration.

These five tips for handling tense situations can be used by most anyone for just about any tense situation. The trick is in actually carrying them out. It gets easier with practice. If you’re someone who would like to do better in tense situation, I hope these tips help.

Source: Associated Content

It’s often easy to feel overwhelmed by difficult circumstances. We feel frozen, incapable of taking a step forward. This story proves that it’s possible to overcome that spiritual (and physical) inertia and move forward anyway:

Can nothing be positive? Most undoubtedly! Sometimes the choice of nothing is the wisest decision one can make. Sometimes doing nothing is basked in pleasure and relief. Sometimes nothing is quiet, peaceful and centering. Here’s what a few experts had to say on absolutely nothing:

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.
Marilyn Monroe

To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.
Buddha

There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.
Buddha

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
Albert Einstein

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Albert Einstein

Nothing will work unless you do.
Maya Angelou

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Maya Angelou

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain

Any time you’ve got nothing to do and lots of time to do it come on up.
Mae West

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
Socrates

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
Groucho Marx

Well, not that you need to know ways to foster trust, right?

According to the “experts”—sociologists, psychologists, economists, political scientists—trust is based on expectation. To the degree you believe you can expect a certain response from someone, you trust him. To the degree you believe he will reciprocate at some point in the future in some (often undefined) way, you trust him. Of course, past experience—with the person in question or with others—will affect that confidence, but in the here and now, certain behaviors and visual cues can also influence if and how much you trust someone:

1. Familiarity. The more contact you have with someone, the more information you collect about him or her. The more information you have, the more confident you can be in your expectations.

2. Resemblance. If someone looks, dresses, or acts like you, you’re more likely to believe his or her actions and reactions will be similar to your own. A 2002 study at a Canadian university showed that people are more likely to trust someone whose facial features resemble theirs.

3. Consistency. The more someone behaves with consistency, the better you’re able to establish patterns and form expectations.

4. Punctuality. If someone is regularly on time, it not only signals consistency, but also general conscientiousness toward other people.

5. Flexibility. Social-exchange theorists have found that people are more likely to trust someone who does not try to explicitly negotiate or force a binding agreement. (Think of the last car salesman you encountered.)

6. Discretion. The ability to keep a secret and exercise tact will always inspire trust.

7. Transparency. The flip side of discretion is transparency. We want someone to keep our secrets, but not her own. Self-disclosure builds trust.

8. Competence. In the workplace, nothing inspires trust more than getting the job done right.

9. Engagement. Trust is based on an understood reciprocity. If someone does not even appear to invest in you, he likely doesn’t have much to lose in betraying you.

10. Face Time. Part of engaging is an effort to make “face time.” A recent study showed that people in the workplace are more likely to trust team members with whom they interact in person more than those they work with via email or videoconference.

11. Facial hair. Another recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications found that consumers trust pitchmen with beards more than those without. There are limits, however, to the beard-trustworthiness theory. Graphic designer Matt McInerney was only halfway kidding when he made a graphic spectrum of “The Trustworthiness of Beards.”

12. Eye contact (but not too much). This is perhaps the biggest behavioral indicator of trustworthiness. But the quality of the eye contact, observes psychologist Elaine Ducharme, also matters. Is it steely or warm? Too much eye contact can be unnerving.

13. Handshake (not too firm, not too soft). Any businessperson can tell you the importance of a firm handshake in building confidence. However, like eye contact, there is a middle ground. Too firm suggests aggression; too soft suggests passivity.

14. Posture. No one trusts a slouch. A straight back projects an image of strength and confidence.

Of course, while these behaviors and visual cues might inspire trust, they don’t guarantee trustworthiness. As Ducharme wryly reminds, many psychopaths maintain excellent eye contact.

As someone who knows firsthand the power of the ocean and its never-ending abilities to free your spirit, this story hit home:

Away from Gaza’s troubled reality and beyond its polluted shore, Shorouq and Sabah Abu Ghanem surf in a world of their own.

The two girls, 13 and 12, learned how to swim at the age of three thanks to their lifeguard father.

They can swim up to 6 miles, dive to 25 feet and surf on plastic boards that they hope one day to trade in for competition-grade models.

“In the sea I find my freedom. I feel free of everything I leave behind on land,” said 13-year-old Shorouq.

“Gaza is under blockade. We lack surfboards, we lack diving gear. We lack many things. But out in the sea it doesn’t matter.”

During this year’s heat wave the shallow waters off the beach were no escape to Gaza residents. It is polluted in several spots because of insufficient sanitation and a crippled sewage treatment plant.

But the daughters of Rajab Abu Ghanem swim confidently out to the clean waves beyond the shoreline.

“My girls are like sea beasts. They are excellent swimmers and surfers,” says the father of seven, who has been surfing for 15 years and has won prizes in long-distance swimming events.

The Mediterranean waves are fickle and often modest, and surfing has never been a popular sport here.

Ismail Zaydah /  Reuters

Sabah Abu Ghanem surfs off the coast of Gaza City on Friday.

But in 2007, Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, a Jewish surfing legend, brought 15 surfboards to Gaza after he saw a video of two Palestinians practicing on a shared, makeshift board.

Those boards quickly disappeared among the young men of Gaza’s Beach Refugee Camp and the girls never got a chance to try them.

Gaza Palestinians on the beach or at open-air restaurants by the seaside are surprised to see the two girls and their female cousins Kholoud and Rawand paddling out into the surf.

“Some people tell us we could drown, but we tell them they know nothing about us,” said 12-year-old Sabah. “When they watch us paddle right out of sight, they change their minds.”

Many Palestinian women in conservative Gaza, which is under the control of the Islamist movement, Hamas, are accustomed to bathe clothed, and find it offensive for girls to go surfing.

“They don’t deter us,” Shorouq said.

Source: MSNBC

My friend if going through a difficult time and decided to get away for a few days. Simple enough. Often, just a break from our normal schedule can offer that healthier perspective we need. So today, wise people and their thoughts on perspective:

If you do not raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.  ~Robert Green Ingersoll

Advice to children crossing the street:  damn the lights.  Watch the cars.  The lights ain’t never killed nobody.  ~Moms Mabley

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.  ~H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.  ~Charles Simic

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.  ~Ivy Baker Priest

Won’t you come into the garden?  I would like my roses to see you.  ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan

People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped.  ~Author Unknown

No object is mysterious.  The mystery is your eye.  ~Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris, 1935

Sin is geographical.  ~Bertrand Russell

I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the years’.  ~Henry Moore

Someone said, “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.”  Precisely, and they are that which we know.  ~T.S. Eliot

A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.  ~Bill Vaughan

In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.  ~Imbesi’s Conservation of Filth Law

If you’re being run out of town, get in front of the crowd and make it look like a parade.  ~Author Unknown

Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.  ~George Santayana

We judge others by their behavior.  We judge ourselves by our intentions.  ~Ian Percy

The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.  ~Henry Miller

There’s no such thing as bragging.  You’re either lying or telling the truth.  ~Al Oliver

I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet.  ~Denis Waitely

A penny will hide the biggest star in the Universe if you hold it close enough to your eye.  ~Samuel Grafton

Is the glass half empty, half full, or twice as large as it needs to be?  ~Author Unknown

Moms Mabley