Aligning your environment with your state of mind

“Beware of the company you keep. Happiness is contagious and so is negativity. People who are not happy themselves cannot be happy for you. Hurt people tend to hurt people.”

Your environment directly influences your behavior and state of mind. Therefore, there needs to be consistency between your thoughts, actions and environment.  The first thing you consider when you plan a vacation is which location is best suited to support the experience you want to have. If you want a peaceful, relaxing experience you’d consider a small island or cabin in the mountains, not a big city.  We are often very critical when assessing our external environments (e.g. work, neighborhoods, Starbuck’s) and the people in these environments, except when it comes to those closest to us like friends and associates.

Emotions can be contagious. Have you ever noticed that when someone starts complaining, you start to complain as well. Or when someone smiles as you, you automatically smile back. What you put out is often what is returned, and what is given to you often has a direct influence on how you feel. So beware of the company you keep. Happiness is contagious and so is negativity. People who are not happy themselves cannot be happy for you. Hurt people tend to hurt people.

Healthcare reform on a napkin

Like many of you, I have been baffled by the blatant lies that are being spread (and people who are actually believing) about the potential health care reform options that are being presented by the Obama administration. It got to the point where I had to do my own research to make sure I understand what was being presented to the public.  This is a complicated and extremely important topic so I thought I’d post this interesting explanation of healthcare on a napkin. I’m a simple person and like to explain things and have things explained to me in a simple way, so here’s healthcare reform on a napkin.

Blogs Galor

My boy Jullien, The PurposeFinder, has an amazing blog and just wrote a post listing his friends blogs. Feel free to check it out if you love to read blogs.

http://julliengordon.mvmt.com/2009/08/08/my-friends-blogs/

Could my horoscope be right?

A few people have asked what’s next now that I’m back from Spain. Well folks, I am back in Chicago actively looking for a job. I re-started the job search last week by submitting my resume to a few places and fortunately, I’ve gotten a decent number of responses. I had an interview yesterday, one today and one next week. I’m having a second round interview next week and a phone interview with a company I’m really interested in. The difference between my interviews this week and the interviews before I left is that I actually LIKE these jobs. They span very different areas, but all focus on my strengths and incorporate my interests in some way. I can feel the difference. For instance, today I walked into my interviewers office to see all three Strength Finder books on her desk and I got excited. We then spent the next 20 minutes talking about how it was baked into the company’s philosophy and distribution of work. They have one person devoted to people management alone. Having consulted with many major companies, I recognize that this is so far from the norm and am really excited that I found these opportunities. But could the moon have something to do with my good fortune?  According to my August horoscope, the full moon lunar eclipse will bring about a new job and more money. I’ll take that.  Below is an excerpt. Let’s see how this all plays out.

You may have to give up one source of income after the full moon lunar eclipse arrives on August 5, but it looks like a new and better one will soon replace it. With Jupiter prominent, you are destined to go up, up, up in the world. You may have planned for a job switch, but if not, it all seems to work in your favor. Indeed, you may say afterward that your old company did you a favor by not valuing your talents more because your new income will be substantially more lucrative than your former one.       Source: Astrology Zone, http://www.astrologyzone.com

More on happiness

In keeping with the theme of “choosing happiness” that I ended the Terezin post with, I thought I’d post this passage from another Paulo Coelho book. I lifted it from my friend’s Facebook page and have not read the book, but it has a powerful message as a stand alone passage.

“Every day, God gives us, as well as the sun, a moment when it is possible to change anything that is causing us unhappiness. The magic moment when a “yes” or a “no” can change our whole existence. Every day, we try to pretend that we do not see that moment, that it does not exist, that today is the same as yesterday and that tomorrow will be the same too. However, anyone who pays close attention to his day will discover the magic moment. It might be hidden in an instant that we put the key in the door in the morning, in the moment of silence after supper, in the thousand and one things that appear to us to be the same. This moment exists, a moment in which all the strength of the stars flows through us and allows us to perform miracles.” ~ BY THE RIVER PIEDRA I SAT DOWN AND WEPT by Paulo Coelho

There’s no one like family

“Family is the community of people whose love does not know the difference between you at your best and you at your worst.”

Right now, I’m sitting in Madrid-Barajas airport getting ready to head home on a long flight with two layovers. My European trip has come to an end. After six weeks of traveling around Spain (and a visit to Prague), it’s time for me to return to the US for a month before my next big summer adventure. I chose to come home today specifically to attend my family reunion in Louisville, KY. While I could have stayed and continued the trip with my travel buddies, it was important to me that I made it back for this. Louisville, KY is a tough match for Madrid, but the difference is that my family will be there. I don’t know about you, but I have the most amazing immediate and extended family. We have fun and know how to party! For those of you who don’t know, the Drummers are a big crew. My father has ten brothers and sisters so every holiday was a big party for me and my 30+ cousins. Our family continues to grow as people get married and the next generation of cousins are growing in numbers. I write all this to say that I am just excited about my trip to Louisville as I was about my trip to Spain because I get to be with my family. I love to travel and plan to continue to do even more of it, but one thing will always remain the same. No matter how far away I am or what I’m doing, I will always make time for my family.

The people we love the most are always the easiest to neglect because we know they will be there for us.  Take a minute to think about how you neglect or disregard your loved ones for “more important” things such as work, relationships, school, etc.  These things will not always be there for you, but your family will. So here’s to the Drummer’s! Safe travels as we decent upon Louisville, KY. I hope the city is ready.

Terezin Concentration Camp

“The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.”

It’s our second day in Prague and today we decided to venture off the beat and path to visit Terezin, a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Up until now, this trip has been very relaxing and easy going. This day trip was a sobering reflection of how quickly lives can be taken at the hands of one person. We rented a car and drove 45 minutes to Terezin. Upon arriving, I felt a dark energy from this town. Maybe I made it up in my head, but there was something different. First, we toured the concentration camp where 100,000+ Jews where housed. Terezin was an internment camp where most Jews were held before being sent to extermination camps to die. Despite this, many people died at Terezin from disease. The camp and its conditions were surreal and it pretty much what’d you expect if you could imagine what a concentration camp would look like. The crazy thing about Terezin is that the Red Cross visited the camp and were convinced that this was “spa” with a barbershop and other “amenities”. Don’t ask… The experience was heavy for me and it’s difficult to express everything in words. After the tour of the concentration camp, we went to the crematorium, where the bodies were cremated, saw the graves of many who died, and then went to the Terezin ghetto museum.

This trip definitely put things in perspective and led me to think about a theme that me and my travel buddy, J had a debate about when she first arrived. The debate was about happiness being a choice. I was reading a magazine with a quote about happiness being a choice, to which J responded, “I don’t agree with that!”. By day three, J changed her initial opinion and agreed with me, and started using small situations as examples of how to “choose” happiness. So I thought about this in the context of the concentration camp. It’s easy for me to say happiness is a choice because my life is pretty good in the grand scheme of things, but if I were in the shoes of the victims of the Holocaust, would it be as easy for me to choose happiness? Does “choosing happiness” mean adopting a sense of complacency? If you’re fighting for your life, does happiness even fit into the equation. So after giving J a hard time for her response, I think I have changed my point of view. Happiness is a choice, but only when basic freedoms are in place.

Ode to street meat!

I’m sure all of you know that I love food. Part of what makes a city great to me is the quality of the food. I could be in the most amazing place, but if the food is bad it’s a thumbs down for me. So in the past six weeks, I’ve indulged in local cuisine and sought out small restaurants and bars and have found some great food in Spain. The food in Madrid, Granada, Sevilla was really good, but only average in Tenerife so I was hoping for good food in Prague. I was skeptical given that I wasn’t sure what Prague was known for. All I could think of was the one type of food that I hate…German.  While walking the streets of Prague on my first day, I saw a stand on the street with sausages on a grill. The sausages looked and smelled so good that I stopped in my tracks. I whispered to Ana that I secretly wanted one and she said she did too. So we snuck away from our health conscious companions to buy some “street meat”. We emerged from the stand with a huge sausage that was so good, we ravished it in minutes. At that moment, I was hooked. The sausage cost 50 Kc with is about $3.00. This was great given that we had lunch at a place that was charging 500-600 Kc ($30-40) for a salad or sandwich. The sausage became my “Zahir” (see previous post) for the moment and I became obsessed with street meat. I obsessed over it so, that I turned it into a form of currency. I had a hard time making sense of the value of a Czech Koruna ($1=0.055Kc) was so I just started quoting things in street meat. “For that bottle of water, I could get 60 street meats….for that salad, I could feed 100 kids with 25 street meats…” I had to have street meat daily and probably drove my travel buddies crazy one day when were walking around a less touristy area that had no street meat vendors. I told them that I thought we should go look for street meat. I ignored the blank stares and continued on my pursuit. Luckily, I turned the corner and happen upon this guy with a grill selling street meat. Ahhh…divine intervention. I even got Janel to get one who kept telling herself that she shouldn’t. You probably think I’m crazy right now, but to drive the point home even more I’ve included a few photos to show the deliciousness that is Prague street meat!

Prague

“The more special something is, the more people start to take it for granted. It’s like they think it will never change.” – The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks

Today I am leaving Tenerife en route to Prague, Czech Republic. This is the final city on my tour of Spain this summer.  Prague is a city that everyone says I will love, so I am looking forward to seeing it. I’ll be in Prague for four days. The good thing about this flight is that we have an 8-hour layover in Madrid! Normally that would suck, but I’m so happy to get a chance to return to Madrid one last time. My love for the city has grown since leaving. I appreciate it so much more now that I’ve been to other cities. Madrid will always be special to me because of the combination of the city itself and the experience I had here.

Lessons Learned at 30 1/2

“The suffering will continue until the lesson is learned.”

Today is the half birthday of my 30^th year. This year, I’m more reflective than in previous years and am being intentional about the awareness of things that are going on in my life. I turned 30 in January and brought the year in with a bang. I also created a list of “30 Things I Want To Do While I’m 30”. I would encourage everyone to do this as well. I’m halfway through year and have completed almost two-thirds of things I listed. I still have seven open spaces that I need to complete. Although maybe I will leave them blank and use them for things I did that was unexpected. That definitely fits with the theme for this year.  For this post I want to take a minute to reflect, not on the things I have accomplished, but on the lessons I have learned.  Here is what I’ve learned in the past six months. More to come in the next six months…

1. Life comes around once; love comes around often. Stop chasing love and let life follow. Start chasing life and let love follow.
2. The accumulation of goods gets you nowhere. At the end of the day you just end up with a bunch of stuff. Use it!
3. I can be happy without a ridiculous amount of money. All I need is enough money to do the things I want to do.
4. Careers come and go. Never rely on an employer to take care of you.
5. It’s impossible to plan life.