The most obvious is to stop spending so much time in front of a screen. OK, not always practical.

So get up during commercials or every half hour and stretch.

In fact, get up and do some aerobic exercise, even just for 30 seconds. Jumping jacks. Dance. Fast-paced push-ups. Skip rope. Anything.

Every few minutes move your eyes away from the screen. Roll your eyes up, to the left, to the right, but most importantly, focus them on something closer and also on something farther than the screen.

Force a yawn. Stretching your face will boost that energy and reduce that stress.

Energize!

This app is at http://apps.facebook.com/threegoodthings/, but the page with  more info is at http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=119352832576&v=info
. It is free to use, but because it is research, they ask participants  to complete very brief surveys after 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, and 6  months of use.

This could be a great way to spread your own happiness. 

But every single lawn is perfectly manicured. All I can wonder is , “Doesn’t anybody here have anything else to do? Does lawn manicuring hold such a high priority in their lives that, with all the competing pressures of modern life, they somehow all find the time to pay this much attention to grass?”

Then one of the neighbors comes out and starts pushing her lawn mower across an already low-cut lawn, somehow managing to cut it even lower. This is a lady with children. Is it just me, or is a huge section of society misplacing their priorities? Remember, your priorities are not what you say they are, but rather how you spend your life.

How do you spend your life? What are your priorities?

“Aw, dad, I know you mean well, and I know I’m not really doing you proud, but I like to party. I’ll get on the right track some day. I don’t need to worry.”

They drove a little further, when suddenly the son said, “Hey dad, that was the turnoff for the cottage. You missed the turnoff.”

“I know,” said the father. “I think I’ll just keep driving this way for a while. I can always go back later to take the right road.”

A few more minutes – and a couple turnoffs – passed. The son began to think of the swimming he would miss if they arrived too late. “Dad, the farther you go down this road, the longer it will take to get back.”

The father replied, “That’s true. The further you go down the wrong track, the harder it is to get back. So when were you thinking of turning your life around to head down the right track?”

Where do you want to go? What do you want out of life? Most importantly, what are you waiting for?

Yehu operates in conjunction with Choice Humanitarian, an international NGO specializing in village development. It was created based on the principles and procedures of the world-renowned Grameen Bank.

Yehu Microfinance works with BasaBody and Coast Coconut Farms to empower poor rural entrepreneurs in Kenya to help create a sustainable living for themselves. This is done through enhanced accessibility to sustainable financial services, business opportunities, and skills training.  In other words, we are not giving them fish; we are giving them fishing rods so that they can catch their own fish.  This is the part I really like.  From a “happiness” perspective, we are helping people both materially and psychologically, by giving them the means to create a worthwhile life for themselves.

Please contribute:

Parenting is pure happiness.
Full of mumminess and pappiness
You jump for joy
When you hear “It’s a boy”
And the room is filled with clappiness

Feel free to add your own limericks to complete the story.  Let’s see how creative you can be.  After all, what follows are sleepless nights, first steps, birthday parties, ballet lessons and hockey games.. 

Miguel de Unamuno makes us think a bit about our natural self-righteousness. We tend to think that our visions are “truth”.

Truth is that when a rock hits your head, the skull cracks open. Vision is that hitting a rock against a head is wrong, because it is killing.

Yes, read that again. That is vision, not truth. In fact, most people accept that killing is right in some instances. Such as killing fellow creatures to eat them. Or killing tyrants who torture or kill others. We kill in war and sometimes as punishment. Some people agree with these actions; some disagree. That is because people have different visions.

We don’t have to agree with other people’s visions, but if we want to get along without a whole lot more killing, it sure would help if we respected other people’s visions a little more than we do now.

It is estimated that about 150 million girls and 75 million boys are vicitims of sexual abuse, and that the majority of all sexual abuse victims are girls who are minors.  Pretty scary.

Here is a short video about Stop The Silence…

(If the video does not appear, click here.)

Note: When using the ChipIn widget to make your donation, the email on the front page will be the main 12for12k Charities one. However, your payment does go directly to Stop the Silence and your PayPal or Credit Card receipt will show this.

He said I was in my early forties
with a lot of life before me
when a moment came that stopped me on a dime
and I spent most of the next days
looking at the x-rays
Talking bout the options
and talking bout sweet time
I asked him when it sank in
that this might really be the real end
how’s it hit you when you get that kinda news
man what’d you do

and he said
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

He said I was finally the husband
that most the time I wasn�t
and I became a friend a friend would like to have
and all the sudden going fishin
wasn’t such an imposition
and I went three times that year I lost my dad
well I finally read the good book
and I took a good long hard look
at what I’d do if I could do it all again

and then
I went sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I gave forgiveness I’d been denying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.

Like tomorrow was a gift and you got eternity to think about
what’d you do with it what did you do with it
what did I do with it
what would I do with it?

Sky diving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named fumanchu
and then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter
and I watched an eagle as it was flying
and he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying.
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying
To live like you were dying