Have you ever noticed how when you are happy everything seems to go better?  Maintaining a mentality of love and gratitude can help keep you in this space.  To use a gardening metaphor: learning to cultivate a landscape of gratitude in your life will allow you to reap happiness far more often than focusing on what isn’t working.

So in honor of Thanksgiving here are some tips and ideas which will help plant the seeds for your garden of gratitude to grow strong.

#1 This month I noticed that many friend devoted their Facebook status updates to gratitude.  I found this helpful because so far for every day in the month of November I’ve had a visual reminder to be thankful and it sparked my own postings related to gratitude.  Not only that, but seeing what others are grateful for has reminded me of some of the things that I take for granted like clean running water.

You can do this on your own with your Facebook status, Twitter updates, in a journal at home, during grace or thanksgiving before a meal, or to a friend or co-worker in conversation.

#2 Comes from Stress.about.com: When you notice yourself getting down and focusing on negativity stop yourself and think of 4 or 5 things for which you are grateful.

#3 Also originates from about.com from the post 10 Simple Ways to Show Gratitude.   My favorite gem is carry a talisman around with you that reminds you of gratitude.

I’ve done this before with a necklace of mine.  Its beads were strung together to give a woman the option to leave forced prostitution.  When I touch the necklace, I remember.  When I remember I am driven to succeed in my work to make the world a better place, and I feel grateful.  Grateful for my free speech, and access to a computer to share those thoughts.  Grateful because I have three full meals per day and a roof over my head.  Grateful for the opportunities that rain down on me every day.  Finally, I am grateful because I could be in that same position but for the grace of God.

I am Grateful for all the opportunities, love and riches in my life.

I am.
I am.
I AM.

My Facebook status reads: Taxes
Steve responds: Spends

As I tried to think of a funny way to continue this conversation the words that came to mind were ‘Drains’ or ‘Exhausts.’  While debating, my internal semantics critic began to shout.  “Do you realize,” the critic asked “that all of those words are about draining and taking away?!”

Wow.  I’d never though of taxes in that way before. Or I had, but without the realization that the word itself was negative.  No wonder we look at this time of year with dread.  Even those I know who will be getting money back each year do not look forward to sitting down with the paperwork.

What are taxes?  A government mandated way to take care of others?  Perhaps that’s one reason why when you give to a 501c3 you can write it off against what you otherwise might owe.  In some ways making donations to an organization whose mission you support allows you to make the decision as to where your money goes.  But making a commitment to donate money also comes with another price tag; your time.

While I enjoy being in business for myself, I do not enjoy sitting down to my taxes.  While some would say to hire a bookkeeper, by the time I get all the receipts and paperwork together I feel like I might as well do them myself.  By that point it just becomes plugging numbers into a form.

Thousands of years ago tithing a percentage of income to the church served to maintain the social support systems, taking care of those who could not take care of themselves.

In general, I believe the theory behind why we pay taxes is as a way to take care of the community needs.  Although, like in ancient times some of the money that comes out of our pockets is used for things that we otherwise might not put our money towards, such as wars.

I also see taxes as an account of the energy that you’ve put out int he past year.  Sitting down with the receipts can be hard or easy.  I’ve recently confronted the amount of money that I spend on food, and while it has gone down, as I go through my books from last year I can see just how much was wasted.  I can also see the effects on various business trips on my funds, some where the payoffs are visible and others where the gambles didn’t pay off.

Doing your taxes is a time when you can’t avoid but seeing the results of your actions.  It is a time to reflect on the occurrences of the previous year.  Stressful.  Painful. UGH!

But as the saying goes ‘there is nothing in life certain besides death and taxes.’ Unless that’s not true…

I ask you to first to think about what purpose taxes serve and then to ask if there is another way to meet that need.  Why not?

Old Havana View

Hello,

I have been sitting in my hotel room for the last hour trying to think of what to tell you about Havana and of Cuba.

The short of it is that it is exactly the same and completely different than I imagined. There are old buildings that haven’t been taken care of and those that have been restored so well that seeing them brings tears to my eyes, they are so beautiful. Of course, I also find the beauty in the ones that are falling down.

The food is worse than I expected – I was thinking it would be alright. There are no vegan options, and few vegetarian. I have felt hungry more often than not, even when full of rice and beans. I am craving vegetables! Lots and lots of fresh vegetables that aren’t deep fried. I have had a few good meals and one great.

The cars are fascinating. The older later 50′s era vehicles have definitely been patched and repainted quite a bit, but it is neat to see. Interspersed with these older cars (a status symbol) are new imports. There is little traffic, and roads are in good condition.

Hasta Luego!

PS Check my twitter feed on this site for more pics.

While many of my friends find twitter to be pointless, a timesuck, and annoying, calling twitter users ‘twits’ or asking if I ‘twatted’ today you can still find me there @kirbonanza because I believe that it has value.

I find that with information and newsletters that I otherwise wouldn’t have time to read I can scan their tweets for titles of the important and pertinent articles. I follow a number of great environmental and evolutionary voices such as the Grist (@grist), Yes! Magazine (@yesmagazine) and EnlightenNext (@ENextMag).

But, beyond this I believe that twitter has another interesting potential use which is recently emerging in the form of two different experiments in alternative currencies, namely Twollars and KayGroschen.

Twollars are cash based, like a movie ticket or a bus pass, as in you can buy them with ‘real’ money. When you give someone a twollar the recipient can get money for this through donations on the Twollars website. It will be interesting to follow whether this catches on and becomes the helpful tool that the makers intended. Charities could potentially get Twollars for good tweets, good work, or general support.

NooPolis whose slogan is “A new world starts with you and me,” can be found on twitter as well (@NooPolis). When a friend who knew I was interested in learning more about alternative currencies told me about KayGroschen I had a hard time finding information that wasn’t in German. While my German is passable while visiting the country, this was out of my league. I finally struck gold on Twittter where I found users @RalfLippold and @kujawa0708 who were able to direct me to information in English. What I found was that KayGroschen is the virtual internal currency of the virtual MicroNation Noopolis (@NooPoBot). This wiki based simulation might prove to be an interesting exercise on re-thinking our systems.

As more people use twitter I am interested in seeing if any other twitter-based alternatives to currency pop up.

My ‘friends’ on Facebook include colleagues, former students, family, friends, people I met once and though were cool, et cetera.  They are the people I know some very well and other not.  Consequentially, I tend to keep my page and information to what I wouldn’t mind the public knowing even though my information is only visible to ‘friends.’

When I decided to change my status to ‘In a relationship with…’ I was thrilled to be in the beginning of a new relationship.  Happy and in love, I had no problem sharing this information with my Facebook friends via social media.

I had never felt upset changing something I had publicly posted, until it the breakup.  The relationship crashed with little warning and one of the first things I had to confront was the change my public status.  It was so early on that the last time anything had been said, I was happy.  UGH!  I don’t want to have to publicly dump myself!  But I certainly wanted to be the one in control of the process and get to it before he could.

My first line of attack, I decided to go from ‘In a relationship’ to ‘Single’ and immediately erased the update so that I could keep my hurt as private as possible.  Then I realized that I could just make the relationship section go away and not have to say single by setting the status to (blank) so I went in to make that change.

Instead of the desired quiet and solitude I started getting comments like  “Congrats! Who’s the new person in your life?” or “Ooh do tell!”  It was then that I realized that when I changed my status from Single to nothing at all, Facebook sent out something to my friends saying that I was no longer single, which they interpreted to mean that I was in a relationship.  In a panic that my private breakup was getting very public I erased the update as soon as I could.  Fortunately, this quickly made additional well wishers go away.

I was ready to get over it on my own, which is what I wanted in the first place, and then every time I logged in the feed from my ex’s page would pop up.  His friends kept saying how sorry they were to hear.  They assumed he had been dumped and were comforting him.  It made me want to scream “He dumped me!  He shouldn’t get condolences for being an idiot!!”  but I held back.  Post after post.  They wondered if I had worn crocs (a major fashion faux pas to him.)  Everything I had tried to avoid in erasing my status update was still in my face.  If we were no longer friends I could have turned away by unfriending him, but I didn’t.

In the end I coped by hiding his updates and erasing the update that said I was no longer single.

If you too want to have an extremely private, public break-up here’s what you have to do:

How to hide the jerk’s updates (don’t worry this can be undone in the case you make the mistake of getting back together)

1) To the right of an update from the the person who you are trying to block there is a box that appears that when you scroll over it.

2) Click on the word ‘Hide’ and then again on ‘Hide (person’s name)’

How to change your relationship status so that none but a Facebook stalker might know.

1) Go to the box on your profile on the left that says ‘Information and click on the pencil in the right corner.

2) Go down to and click on ‘Edit Information’

3) Under Relationship status change the line to be blank.  This will hid your relationsip status in the Information portion of your profile.

4) Finish editing/ save changes

5) Go to your profile and next to the update that touts your new realtionship status a ‘remove’ button will appear to the right when scrolled over  (just like the ‘Hide’ feature). Click on it.

Now go buy some fair trade chocolate, read a good book or go for a hike and move on.  He/she wasn’t worth your time in the first place!