Sometimes we all need a little jump start.  Whether we’re itching to pursue the dreams we’ve held in our heart since childhood or we simply need the willingness to tackle mundane chores, we can often find ourselves mired in a rut of inertia and feel like it’s the most difficult task to rise out of it. So every Monday, I’ll be passing on helpful tips and techniques designed to give you the boost you need to START!

Just begin

It’s the start of any objective that is often the hardest for most of us, because we convince ourselves the task will be unpleasant or boring. However, you can trick yourself into believing that you’re only going to work on it for a few minutes. Grab that egg timer and set it for 15 minutes again. Promise yourself you can stop working after 15 minutes if you want to, but you have to work at least that long. Most often, after the 15 minutes are up, you’re already “in the groove” so you don’t want to stop!

Dress to the nines

We often equate casual dress with more relaxed activities, so if you’re trying to accomplish something – dress up! Put on a business suit or somewhat formal outfit, including shoes and socks (or pantyhose). Style your hair, shave, and put on cologne or perfume – whatever you would normally do for a social or business event. This gets your mind into action mode and clears away any tendency to slack off.

S-t-r-e-t-c-h

If you feel tense and irritable, stretching your body can do wonders for your mood. Take just a few minutes to warm up your muscles by marching in place or taking a short walk. Then take your time stretching your muscles very gently, holding each stretch for a few seconds. Start with your face and neck, and work your way down to your toes. As you work each area, imagine all stress and tension leaving your body, and a new sense of peace and happiness flowing in to replace it.

Surround yourself with inspiration

Do you have some favorite plaques, prints or paintings that make you feel inspired? Fill up your blank walls with them! Visit a flea market or home décor store for visuals that lift your spirits. Go to a stock photo site and download a few beautiful images and have them blown up into a larger size at your local photo place. Take some of your favorite motivational quotes, enlarge the type, print and hang them up to read whenever you need a little boost. Hanging inspiring words and images in your home and workplace can create a continuous focus on inspiration that will keep you feeling motivated no matter what you’re working on.

Wear a symbol of intention

Go through your belongings and choose an item that you can wear as a motivation symbol (or go shopping and buy something new). It could be anything from a lucky shirt to a favorite hat, to a cherished piece of jewelry that you rarely wear. Hold a little ceremony that designates that item as your “motivation symbol.” State aloud that while you are wearing this item, you will always feel very motivated, very inspired, and very productive. Then be sure to put it on every time you feel in need of some motivation. Eventually your mind will make a connection between that item and the feelings of motivation and you’ll be able to effortlessly slip into a motivated mind-set just by putting on your motivation symbol.

Cut-up credit-card dress. Most shopkeepers will give credit cards back to you after they scissor them in half. Why not put them to good use? Leftover masking tape makes excellent espadrilles to add some Riviera flair.

Check out the Ticket Tape Fringe Dress with hubcap accessory, the Breadwrapper Bustier the Cinch Sake Dress  and more HERE!

Yet there are some cultures that do not engage in kissing at all. Kissing is apparently unknown among the Somalians, the Lepcha of Sikkim and the Sirono of Bolivia. The people of Mangia Island in the South Pacific did not do it until Europeans arrived in the 1700s. When the Thongi of South Africa saw whites kissing, they apparently said “Look at them – they eat each others saliva and dirt”.

Adults in some Amazonian tribes did not kiss, though the children did. Still other cultures kiss without using their lips. The Inuit practice the “Eskimo Kiss” by rubbing noses, or putting noses together and inhaling each other’s breath. This kiss is also performed by numerous Pacific Islander cultures, including the Maori of New Zealand, where it is a ritual greeting.   However this belief could be a Hollywood creation.

In ancient India, Sanskrit writings describe a similar method of kissing, and anthropologists have suggested that India is actually the birthplace of kissing as we know it today. Indian sculptures are the first human cultural artifact to depict kissing, and the theory is that the idea of “exchanging breath” led to locking lips.

Interesting, Indian films today do not show kissing at all. In ancient China, kissing was considered to be on a par with coitus, and thus was confined to the bedroom. This led European explorers to conclude that the Chinese did not kiss at all. In strict Muslim countries public kissing does not occur, and in some cases people have been arrested for kissing outside the home. In Vietnam, spouses do not kiss outside the home, and not in front of the children. And parents rarely kiss children, except when they are small babies.

In some areas of Italy and other Mediterranean countries, friends greet each other by kissing on the mouth, men and women both. Arab men kiss each other on the cheek in greeting. In France, protocol demands a kiss on each cheek, while the Dutch throw in a third one for good luck.

In the animal world, the highly sexed Bonobo chimpanzees are known to kiss each other passionately. And orangutans in Borneo have learned to kiss each other by observing humans.

I was wondering how long he’d been in the water when I noticed the whale.

OK…well I’m sure the reason AP Photographer Steve Mitchell took with photo was to document the rescuer’s work to keep alive one of the 17 long-finned pilot whales that were being battered by rough seas after they were beached in Hamelin Bay, Western Australia on March 23, 2008.

40 more incredible photos of our planet and the brutal realities amidst the awe-inspiring beauty HERE. 

What a dichotomy we’ve made of our world.

A couple other thought-provoking photos below. 

Stars in the night sky rotate above the distinctive chimney stack on the top of Cape Cornwall near St. Just on April 12, 2009 in Cornwall, England.

Elang, an Indonesian student, swims in foamy, polluted waters after school, at the Pluit Dam in Jakarta, Indonesia on April 20, 2009.

The Democratic Party stopped being my “home” on May 31, 2008; the day my party concluded is wasn’t necessary to so much as feign a democratic process.  A decision that might have given rise to a real revolution instead was lost in the onslaught of cyber-bullying and mindless rhetoric that went on and on and on, until that handful of power brokers got what they wanted.  Those of us, who refused to jump on the hopey changey bandwagon, crawled back to our safety zones still radicalized in our hearts and minds but outgunned on the political battlefield. 

It will take years if not decades to decipher how (or better WHY for gawd’s sake)  so many Americans got so stupefied by simplistic branding during this election, but I know for sure it is absolutely right to hold this presidency accountable at every turn!  The honeymoon for the hopey changey regime was rightfully short.     

I’ve shied away for political discourse since the election because I thought it was right to honor the cartharsis of electing the first black president, and because I’ve found the toxicity of it was having a negative effect on the core of my life.  Although I find some respite here, here, and expecially here.  I’ve felt it was important to step back and get some perspective on my place (and obligation) in the political process.  Then I happened to run across this clip of Janeane Garofalo being “interviewed” by Keith Olbermann. 

My first reaction looked something like this. 

Some people would say this kind of vile, banal junk shouldn’t be given the time of day.  In one sense I agree.  These two are underbelly-dwelling provocateurs, getting their fix of narcissistic gratification by demoralizing thousands of well-meaning people.  They don’t deserve credit or an audience, but let’s be clear about their function as part of the media component of this regime.  This is purposeful abuse perpetuated on a segment of the American population to intimidate them and get them to shut up. 

Janeane and Keith are disposable commodities, so not one bit of this phenomenon is about them.  What is at issue is the unprecedented and consistent abuse by Obama supporters toward their detractors.  And no, it isn’t the same abuse from the other side.  It is orchestrated, purposeful and widely effective at gaining compliance from large groups of voters, especially women.  The personalized gender-bashing insults, trigger survival fears deeply engrained in the subconscious minds of targeted groups within our society.  Janeane spilled the beans when she referenced the limbic brain, frontal lobe and synapses firing.  In typical narcissist fashion, she projects onto others precisely what she is doing.  Of course it’s clear she knows nothing about brain science.  By the time the academic theory tricked down to the goons on the frontline of the media contingent, the science was lost but the strategy was apparent.    

I put a small sign in my daughter’s bedroom that reads, “Don’t grow a wishbone daughter where a backbone ought to be.”  I’m thinking I’ll put one at my desk as well and remember this kind of intimidation propaganda is not different or new because it’s spewed by another woman. 

The lyrics are a haunting reflection of her life;

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used
And wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung
No wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame.

And still
I dream he’ll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms
We cannot weather…

I had a dream my life would be
So different form this hell I’m living
so different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

A frumpish 47 year old from Blackburn, West Lothian Scotland, Susan Boyle gave up her dream of a singing career to take care of her sick mother who died in 2007 at the age of 91. She never married. She has never been kissed. She lives with her 10 year old cat. She dreamed a dream of being a professional singer. When she walked on stage the crowd snickered and the judges rolled their eyes.  Everyone was laughing…

Watch what happens here.   Whew.  Wiping the tears from my ears. 

“ Now, that the glamour has rubbed off of Obama and he is revealed to be just another human being and shmoozer extraordinaire, you are upset that he isn’t listening to you and responding to your perfectly acceptable demands for ending the war and holding the finance industry accountable.  Now, you are looking around for allies hoping that we can all get along to *do* something and hold Congress and Obama accountable.

But the end of the primary was conducted in such a way as to make your input unnecessary, even irrelevant.  This is what you agreed to when you did not stand up at the RBC hearing and demand fairness.  Your cheering of Obama or even silence in the matter gave the party permission to ignore you in the future.  THEY knew that Hillary was the true winner and that Obama ran a lousy campaign.  That’s why they gave him 59 unpledged delegates from Michigan plus 4 of his opponents.  They did it so he could beat her.  He couldn’t have done it otherwise.  He didn’t have sufficient votes and FL and MI were going to have to count no matter how you do the math.  So, they rigged the vote.

Now, you may say that we keep coming back to this like we are bitter deadenders and why don’t we get over it.  To be honest, it wasn’t about Hillary after May 31.  Oh, we still wanted her and we hadn’t finished exhausting our options.  We had an obligation to see it through to the very end so we could give everyone time to come to their senses and realize what they were about to do.  And we were faithful to her and ourselves as long as we could be.

But the question is not why we don’t get over it but why you guys still haven’t got a clue. ” 

What is so amazing about this is the power of music to change the energy in a physical place. Enjoy!