Had a great time in St. George with my girls! Happiness, sunshine, and cute pictures. Click picture for more!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Gently!
HRH and I were on a walk this morning and we come upon some grass with this sign on it:
"I'm trying to grow,
please don't walk on me."
-BYU Grounds
Good call...
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The 4 Minutes Rule
So, I went to a presentation this morning by a Judy Johns...a professor at BYU who has also had a book of poetry published. She was hilarious and spoke to us about LIGHTENING UP! She gave a lot of great advice, made us laugh till our sides hurt, and shared some stats! One of the things she talked about was The 4 Minutes Rule which is simply that for your first four minutes of interaction with someone (significant other, parent, child, roommate, etc.) you should be positive. After that window of time is over then you may nag, whine, and complain at will! Haha...not exactly but she gave examples of experiences with her husband where their first interaction in the morning or when he came home from a long day at work to her at home with 6 kids would go right into a conversation about the struggles of the day...it was draining! But when they followed The 4 Minute Rule they found it easier to talk about their struggles or disagreements and bear them nicely because they had had that time at the beginning.
So..she threw out a statistic (and I'm a statistic skeptic) that 75% of conversation in the work place is negative. Wow! I believe it though. And I think a lot of our conversation with the people close to us can end up being negative too. I spent time with some friends last night and one of them said that she had heard, at another meeting of this kind, about some repeated council given to women in the early days of the LDS church by Joseph Smith, the leader of the church at the time (information provided by a church historian by the name of Susan Easton Black who found the council recorded in minutes taken by the secretary of the women's organization, Eliza R. Snow). Two common treads were found in the advice...the one applying here being to, "Bridle your tongues." Negativity, backbiting, gossiping, comiserating run rampant in our conversations...how are we suppossed to break into being happy when we indulge in these things.
One more thought on the matter of being positive. I am reading the book Blink by Malcolm Caldwell. Great book but cut to the chase of the chapter I just finished. A group of phsychologists did an extensive study in which they took apart every muscle in the face (not literally) and documented the movements it could make. They then combined the different types of movements into categories to determine what all went into what emotions. So their would be an emotion like suprised with a list of the facial muscles and what they each did. Well they found that when they were studying some of the more negative emotions and recreating those emotions on their faces, that their mood actually changed. They did further study in which they studied the physical chages in the body (temperature, and heart rate) of two groups of people. One group of people was asked to relive in their minds a time when they were most troubled and the second group was simply asked to change their facial expressions to look unhappy. In BOTH groups, temperature and heart rates increased. Just making the facial expression had a physical change on people. Wow!
I recently said, "Good morning," to a particularly Eeyore like friend (see donkey in Winnie the Pooh). He responded with, "What's so good about." Lighten up!
So..she threw out a statistic (and I'm a statistic skeptic) that 75% of conversation in the work place is negative. Wow! I believe it though. And I think a lot of our conversation with the people close to us can end up being negative too. I spent time with some friends last night and one of them said that she had heard, at another meeting of this kind, about some repeated council given to women in the early days of the LDS church by Joseph Smith, the leader of the church at the time (information provided by a church historian by the name of Susan Easton Black who found the council recorded in minutes taken by the secretary of the women's organization, Eliza R. Snow). Two common treads were found in the advice...the one applying here being to, "Bridle your tongues." Negativity, backbiting, gossiping, comiserating run rampant in our conversations...how are we suppossed to break into being happy when we indulge in these things.
One more thought on the matter of being positive. I am reading the book Blink by Malcolm Caldwell. Great book but cut to the chase of the chapter I just finished. A group of phsychologists did an extensive study in which they took apart every muscle in the face (not literally) and documented the movements it could make. They then combined the different types of movements into categories to determine what all went into what emotions. So their would be an emotion like suprised with a list of the facial muscles and what they each did. Well they found that when they were studying some of the more negative emotions and recreating those emotions on their faces, that their mood actually changed. They did further study in which they studied the physical chages in the body (temperature, and heart rate) of two groups of people. One group of people was asked to relive in their minds a time when they were most troubled and the second group was simply asked to change their facial expressions to look unhappy. In BOTH groups, temperature and heart rates increased. Just making the facial expression had a physical change on people. Wow!
I recently said, "Good morning," to a particularly Eeyore like friend (see donkey in Winnie the Pooh). He responded with, "What's so good about." Lighten up!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Two Random Thoughts
Ode to people with great ideas and the ability to do something about them (engineers in this case:
I was just driving home from the library and in front of me was a big manly truck (the make and model I don't know) with an interesting device in the back. It was a wheelchair on some sort of lever raising and lowering device. I wondered if it was being transported somewhere...it kind of resembled the raising and lowering things there are at public pools. I glanced down at the licence plate and saw that it had the little wheelchair sign to indicate a driver with a disability. (P.S. All of this happened with a minute window of time.) It appeared to be then that this device raised the wheelchair out of the truck and lowered it at the driver's door. Wow! Maybe I'm the last one to see a device like this but wow! How amazing. The man driving that truck can be completely self-sufficient...what a great invention!
If reports in school had always been this interesting:
Same drive home, I'm listening to the sound track to Aida (if you don't know the play I recommend viewing it next time you get a chance...I saw it at one of the amazing high school performances here in Utah...talented kids wow!). Low and behold I make a text to text connection. Amneris, a character from the play, reminds me a lot of the character Glinda from Wicked. Can I just say, the thoughts that just ran through my head during the last 5 minutes of my travel would be easy material for any one of the many compare and contrast papers that were done during my high school and college years and it wasn't even an effort...it was fun because the material "studied" is stuff I enjoy!!! I will now point out the similarities I found and in both plays and if you have not seen one or either of them, go see them and then get back to me. This is mostly for my enjoyment...a quick write that I'm not assigned to do! Woot woot!!!
Compared information will be given in the order of that which comes from Aida and then Wicked
Both women sing pretty ridiculous songs depicting how superficial they are!
My Strongest Suit and Popular
Both women are jilted by the man "engaged" to them who then falls in love with the main female character, who happens to be a close friend or confidant and who is considered the inferior of the two women in the rankings or social classes established in the play.
Radames off with Aida, Fiyero off with Elfaba
Both women end in a powerful situation after the lovers have left the scene (in various ways), and become strong women of power who change their communities for good.
Both groups of women sing or have part in a song with a, "He loves me...no wait he loves you!" song.
Not Me and I'm Not That Girl
Both stories have an idealized place where people have come from or hope to go in which their problems would be erased.
Nubia and The Emerald City
The pointed differences between the vying cultures are marked by color.
White Egyptians vs. black Nubians, and blond Glinda vs. green Elphaba.
Even their covers have similarities...two contrasting and somewhat overlapping faces (again emphasizing the color difference).
Anyway, random thoughts by me! Don't give me a grade...it was a quick but fun thing!
I was just driving home from the library and in front of me was a big manly truck (the make and model I don't know) with an interesting device in the back. It was a wheelchair on some sort of lever raising and lowering device. I wondered if it was being transported somewhere...it kind of resembled the raising and lowering things there are at public pools. I glanced down at the licence plate and saw that it had the little wheelchair sign to indicate a driver with a disability. (P.S. All of this happened with a minute window of time.) It appeared to be then that this device raised the wheelchair out of the truck and lowered it at the driver's door. Wow! Maybe I'm the last one to see a device like this but wow! How amazing. The man driving that truck can be completely self-sufficient...what a great invention!
If reports in school had always been this interesting:
Same drive home, I'm listening to the sound track to Aida (if you don't know the play I recommend viewing it next time you get a chance...I saw it at one of the amazing high school performances here in Utah...talented kids wow!). Low and behold I make a text to text connection. Amneris, a character from the play, reminds me a lot of the character Glinda from Wicked. Can I just say, the thoughts that just ran through my head during the last 5 minutes of my travel would be easy material for any one of the many compare and contrast papers that were done during my high school and college years and it wasn't even an effort...it was fun because the material "studied" is stuff I enjoy!!! I will now point out the similarities I found and in both plays and if you have not seen one or either of them, go see them and then get back to me. This is mostly for my enjoyment...a quick write that I'm not assigned to do! Woot woot!!!
Compared information will be given in the order of that which comes from Aida and then Wicked
Both women sing pretty ridiculous songs depicting how superficial they are!
My Strongest Suit and Popular
Both women are jilted by the man "engaged" to them who then falls in love with the main female character, who happens to be a close friend or confidant and who is considered the inferior of the two women in the rankings or social classes established in the play.
Radames off with Aida, Fiyero off with Elfaba
Both women end in a powerful situation after the lovers have left the scene (in various ways), and become strong women of power who change their communities for good.
Both groups of women sing or have part in a song with a, "He loves me...no wait he loves you!" song.
Not Me and I'm Not That Girl
Both stories have an idealized place where people have come from or hope to go in which their problems would be erased.
Nubia and The Emerald City
The pointed differences between the vying cultures are marked by color.
White Egyptians vs. black Nubians, and blond Glinda vs. green Elphaba.
Even their covers have similarities...two contrasting and somewhat overlapping faces (again emphasizing the color difference).
Anyway, random thoughts by me! Don't give me a grade...it was a quick but fun thing!
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