You are amazing!!

Thank you!

You are amazing!

Why? The BlissOdyssey blog has hit a thousand views this week. I write for the people who read my blog and also because I love to do so. But to see the growth of the blog is an inspiration for me to keep writing.

I started last fall with the idea to start a blog, not really knowing what to write about. I didn't want to write about my day to day life, that would not be very interesting for random people. And the persons to whom my day to day life matters are part of it. After some thinking I decided to blog about motivation and life goals. It's a topic I hold dear. I believe we should always try to better ourselves no matter how old we are or in what life situation we're in. Learning is a lifelong experience.

Talking about learning, that's going to be my next blog subject so be sure to come back to read it.

With the relative success of my blog I intend to keep at it. As long as people will want to read I'll write. Thanks to all for your support.

Here's a small piece of wisdom to end today's blog:

"Find the courage to hold on to your beliefs, even if the world around you chooses differently. Have the courage to change those beliefs that no longer fit the person you have become. In doing so, you truly become yourself."

- Author Unknown

  

Simply vacation

Ocean panning to the horizon, a cool salty breeze blowing through the long beach grass, sandy shore to my left and rocky cliffs at my right. Behind me was infinite grassy hills spotted with multicolored houses looking like small mushrooms. The sky was cloudy and the sun getting ready for a night's rest. Sharing all this beauty with people I love.

Doesn't that sound magical? That is exactly how I felt on vacation last week as I looked around me. As impressive and as immersing this seems, I still had the urge to pickup my iPad and connect to a wireless network to check my emails. I open it and see that I have no service. The campground's network was only 10$ for the week, I've paid much more to get there, this was nothing.

At that moment I looked around me again. The ocean. The wind in the sand. The beach. The colorful hills. The wonderful people around me. And I asked myself, what will Internet bring to that already magical moment?

NOTHING.

Vacations are about escaping your day to day routine. Forget about that TV show you watch on Monday nights, forget about your emails (don't worry they'll wait until you get back), forget about everything and live the moment. Now. There's no tomorrow or yesterday when you're on vacation.

I've had some hectic vacations in the past in which I've seen loads of marvelous landmarks. But I have to admin that these vacations when I woke up in the morning without a clue what I was going to do that day were refreshing and relaxing.

Where was that little piece of heaven?

Les Iles de la Madelaine. A set of small tiny islands about 80 kilometers North of Prince Edward Island, Canada. People in those remote places don't know about stress. They go know about helping and supporting your community, something I talked about briefly in my earlier blog Food for Thought. I found it inspiring to see the local products so widely spread over the islands. Crafts from china is still cheaper but everywhere you went you saw local crafts. I visited a sand craft shop, drove on the other side of the island at a small coffee shop to see their lampshades made from sand I've seen earlier, serving beer from the brewery I visited the day before. I'm going at the market next weekend.

So. I had wonderful vacations filled with inspiring moments. Relaxing environment. And no Internet!

Simply marvelous. I can't wait for my next vacations.

Here's a few other pictures I took from the island.

Beautiful local art by Arthure

Local beer. Excellent.

The Fun Theory - Piano stairs and more...

Here's a nice video. If fun things makes people do more exercise I'm all for it. There's probably not notes playing on all stairs but you can sing in your head while climbing the stairs if it makes you happier!

Visit the fun theory website, a Volkswagen initiative, for more videos where they experiment with fun ideas to promote better behaviors like ways to encourage people to follow speed limits or throw away their garbage in the "World's deepest bin"!

Have a great day everyone and have lot of fun!

Quote - Lao Tzu - Thousand Miles Journey

All things you want to achieve or accomplish in life has one thing in common. It all starts with the first step!

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." - Lao Tzu

I feel like I should write more about this since it's a very important concept to take the first step. One question comes to mind. What is the first step? It's the first action taken toward your goal. In the case my blog for example the first step was to register my blog on Blogger. Just thinking about doing a blog and what I'm going to talk about is not a step. It's just like debating which road to take to your destination, you can reflect on it for weeks but are not going anywhere as long as you don't take that first step.

I watch a video conference of Cameron Johnson a while back. Cameron is 26 today. He made 50000$ selling Beanie Babies at the age of 12. He was making 15000$ a day at the age of 15 and made his first million before graduating high school. One of the thing he highlighted as being one of his top factor in achieving all this was to put himself out there. That's the first thing to do in anything you wish to accomplish. 

If I don't tell anyone I'm writing a blog, who going to read it? If you stay home how are you going to meet a potential girlfriend? How are you going to sell paintings if they sit in your basement? Get yourself out there, talk about your ambitions, attend conventions or anything related to your goals.

Take that first step and the momentum may carry you further and faster than you may have thought!

Life's a marathon: Allegory #2

In the first marathon allegory I talked about how important experience was. It is experience which set your pace, without experience you'll either run too fast or too slow, waste energy when you should gain back energy and mush more factors that determines if you ever reach your goal.

But...

"Injury happens. When it does, it's up to you to decide if you keep running or not once you're back on your feet"

I twisted my right ankle this week and I can't run. I'm not sure when I'll be able to make my next long run but I will run again. That's my choice.

This may seems trivial when applied to running but this concept is present in our lives. We all love or loved to do certain things. For example, traveling. Some people love traveling around the world. But injuries happens. While in life situation a twisted ankle won't stop someone from its traveling habit having babies may. This would be an injury to his ability to travel, so to speak. But once back on his feet, the children old enough, traveling can resume. There's no reason why someone can't travel once their injury is cured.

I'm in my thirties and I've seen it happen over and over again. People loving sports stop because they're in college and never take up sport again. Even though they miss the old days. Some leave their bands and stop playing music to focus on a job. Others stop drawing, writing, painting because they get in a new relationship.

Life is long, when you take a break from something you love, don't make it an absolute break. Get back to it once you're back on you feet.

Quote - Along Came The Hippo

Sometimes, you're caught liking something ordinary. You see a plain blue shirt and like it for no apparent reasons, same goes for movies. Along Came Polly is one of those movies for me, when I think about it nothing really stands out, ordinary flick story, simple characters and average acting. Somehow all this mixed with a blind ferret did the trick for me.

Somewhere at the beginning of the movie, Claude, a French scuba diver instructor, tells the story of the hippo which even in this comical setting as a profound meaning.

Claude: It's like zee story of zee heeppo.
Reuben Feffer: I'm not familiar with that story.
Claude: Zee heeppopotamoose, he is not born saying, "Cool beans. I am a heeppo." No way, Joesay. So he try to paint zee stripe on him to be like zee zebra, but he fool no one. Then he try to put zee spot on zee skin to be like the leopard, but everyboody know he is a heeppo. So, at certain point, he look himself in zee mirror and he just say, "Hey. I am a heeppopotamoose and zere is nothing I can do about it." As soon as he accepts zis, he live life happy. Happy as a heeppo. You understand zis, Luban?
Reuben Feffer: [long pause] I'm gonna kill you!

Don't be alarm at Reuben's response to the Hyppo tale, if you don't know the relation between Reuben and Claude watch the movie!