Fashion, Turn to the Left.

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Rod's World

Do you consider your self stylish and what is style anyway? Today is one of my words off the wall blogs – we are having the documentary Advanced Style where the lives of Seven unique New York women are depicted. It looks fascinating, here is the trailer for it: 7 Unique Women.

I have not been known as a stylist belonging more to the alternative scene over the years, caftans and flairs do not make many of the fashion magazines although there were some very unique clothes worn by my fashionista friends. So lets have a look at what society has to say about advanced style, here are my 15 quotes that I have chosen to consider:

1. Albert suggests that it is difficult to walk through life with a sense of style through just having knowledge, as this is limited. Imagination is what has you stand out from the pack.

2. But with no education as exists in some places in the world it is also impossible to change your circumstances and break out from the mundane.

3. One of the great stylists who has re-invented the meaning of creating your own world, Oprah shows what determination can get you.

4. Don’t young kids dressed as adults look oh so cute, not if you ask them, it’s like putting them in prison garb.

5. Lynn is one of the stars of Advanced Style, does your mother look like this at the same age, I know mine doesn’t.

6. At one stage it was Grey is the new Black as they become the majority of the population this statement is now more the norm.

7. Susan Sarandon recently went to Burning Man, this stylish actress was interviewed about her experience of the major alternative festival in the states : What did she think?.

8. Definitely one of the more stylish dressers of his age, Mark Twain AKA Samuel Clemens was a believer in age was a made up concept, and that you were as young as you felt.

9. To look fashionable you need to be original, if you buy off the rack you have a very good chance you will turn up an event in exactly the same attire as another, no imagination , no originality.

10. A man who also redefined style was Stephen Hawking, a sufferer of Motor Neuron disease from an early age, he has not let this hinder him and is one of the most sought after speakers in the world.

11. We don’t appear to be that far off when our style of transport will change dramatically. Using Doctor Who in this image points to what will be available some time this century.

12. And the greatest style advantage we have in life is that we are uniquely us, no one is more Youer than You.

13. Luckily the internet revolution has turned around people’s ability to find out what styles are relevant and allows them to learn and move on from where they are these days. Libraries are also a valuable place to attain this.

14. Malala Yousafzai (Malālah Yūsafzay: born 12 July 1997) is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate.She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Yousafzai’s advocacy has since grown into an international movement. Her Passion and style have influenced many organisations and celebrities to take on her cause.

15. David Bowie became a stylist by writing awesome songs and changing his persona every few years. The title of this blog is taken from one of his greatest songs : Fashion, David Bowie Style.

Style is a much used word, how do you use it , in your clothes, in your ride, I have the first triathlete pushbike released in Australia, it’s very smick, or in the way you relate to others. There are many ways to be stylish.

Namaste until Easter Monday my dear friends.

Unadulterated Joy for Me!!

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Rod's World

I have just completed the first Activation program by my friend and mentor Arion Light : Activation Schools Web Page. On the final evening we came up with an Essence for our Vision for Life, My essence flowed immediately , it was Unadulterated Joy. I just have to write about it as much of the six week journey if the course was spent in this Essence.

What does unadulterated mean, here is my favourite on-line dictionaries meaning:

un·a·dul·ter·at·ed

1. Not mingled or diluted with extraneous matter; pure: unadulterated coffee.

2. Out-and-out; utter: unadulterated joy.

unadulterated

not debased or made impure

So I am residing in the Essence of out and out utter joy, my logical mind fights this on a regular basis but luckily the training works and works well. So what does the world have to say about unadulterated joy. lets have a look with these 15 beautiful quotes:

1. Bernie Mac,recently deceased comedian believed that the way to be joyous in your life was to simply be yourself, and as he says in this quote if they don’t like it …………………!!

2. Jim Bishop was an author who wrote historical books, here he is pointing out that unless we focus on Joy it will fade as will other diverse thing such as grief.

3. Don’t we all wish we could return to the joy we feel as very young children, their world is definitely the most peaceful and joyful we spend on the planet. We don’t know what racism, jealousy and corruption are.

4. Frederick Philip Lenz, III, Ph.D., also known as Rama and Atmananda, was a spiritual teacher who taught what he termed American Buddhism, including the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Vedanta, and Mysticism. One of the great premised of Buddhism is humility, as taught by HHDL.

5. Playing just because he loves to, unadulterated joy. They wrote a song about this : Song of Joy.

6. Joy can come from anyone, even MF’s Had to think for a while what it stood for, guess that means I’m not one.

7.Suzie Orman is a financial wizard, but states that happiness works in all areas of your life and brings her partner joy along for the ride.

8. Relief is another area of life that can generate unadulterated joy, all those fears leaving your body and mind as you enter the blessed space of relieving the pressure from them.

9. One of Bobs great 60’s videos using the cardboards signs depicts unadulterated joy for me Most Likely you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.

10. I’m working on this , has been a long long time.

11. People with Down Syndrome have no barriers to their expression. Empathic, truthful to the max you know they live life with unadulterated joy.

12. I have attached the fascinating and funny TED talk by Robert Sapolsky, its a bit long, but worth it, yes other species think the human race is bizarre : Funny Joyous Humanity.

13. Dr. Bob Rotella writes golfing books, many golfing widows may not agree with this but to me its a great way to obtain joy in your life.

14. How could I leave the Buddha out in a discussion on Unadulterated Joy. Here is a short musical offering to attain the state via meditation : Relaxing Buddhist Music.

15. I have found that with residing in Unadulterated Joy the latter part of this quote is true, I have stopped explaining my life to others, no explanations, just Sacred Love and Sacred Stories.

Will I complete my vision and hang out in the Essence of Unadulterated Joy, time will tell and its purely up to me.

Namaste until Thursday my dear friends

What makes a Hero?

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Rod's World

Each of us has different heroes, my 89 year old mum’s are Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela and she has never been to South Africa or America. I am sure for most very young children it is their mum and dad. How do you get to be deigned hero status, is it through an act of immense bravery in battle, myself I believe the heroes are those who refuse to go and kill another human being in the name of some political cause or should we say even Oil.

There were many images showing soldiers in the background, I deliberately did not choose them, heroism is not killing another, heroism to me is stepping outside what your fears tell you you can do and going for it anyway. Here are the 15 quotes I have chosen to use to recognise the heroism that exists on our planet.

1. Maya Angelou is a heroine to many an activist, in an age when African Americans were not recognised as people she strode through the civil rights movement, With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her works have been considered a defence of Black culture. Attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries, but her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide. here is Maya performing And Still I Rise.

2. In our country, we have a status in life called the tall poppy syndrome, don’t rise to high or you will be chopped down at the knees. This makes the above statement very poignant, Its up to us, because we can, its our time.

3. Joseph Campbell, American Mythologist who created The Heroes Journey and the quote “Follow your Bliss” covers the moments when we become bigger than ourselves and enter hero status.

4. As children we love our superheroes, their colourful capes and costumes and super powers, because they are special people. Later we realise we don’t have the same powers and learn to become our own hero or heroine.

5. Hard times, we all have them in our lives, some much worse than others and the time it takes to recover to the hero status within us is unique for each person, Gillian Welch wrote a beautiful song about them: Gillian’s Hard Times.

6. Talking about superheroes Christopher Reeve was the actor from the first Superman movies, everyones hero. On May 27, 1995, Reeve became a quadriplegic after being thrown from a horse during an equestrian competition in Culpeper, Virginia. He required a wheelchair and a portable ventilator for the rest of his life. He lobbied on behalf of people with spinal-cord injuries and for human embryonic stem cell research, founding the Christopher Reeve Foundation and co-founding the Reeve-Irvine Research Centre. He remained a hero to the day he died of a heart attack at the tender age of 52.

7. I can imagine most of us living the comfort of our lives today would imagine travelling on one of these vessels was a heroes journey. There is still the opportunity to take such journey these days, go out and discover them for yourselves.

8. The criminals were always trying to unmask Batman in his movies and comics to discover his identity, true everyday heroes do not need masks, they just get the job done.

9. I/We can do this, enough said.

10 And Mum.

11. Mary McCarthy was an American author who parents died when she was 8 in the great flu plague of 1918, sent to abusive relatives she moved around until going to University. During the 1940s and 1950s she became a liberal critic of both McCarthyism and Communism. She maintained her commitment to liberal critiques of culture and power to the end of her life, opposing the Vietnam War in the 1960s and covering the Watergate scandal hearings in the 1970s. She visited Vietnam a number of times during the Vietnam War. Interviewed after her first trip, she declared on British television that there was not a single documented case of the VietCong deliberately killing a South Vietnamese woman or child. She wrote favourably about the Vietcong.

12. Some people go as far as tattooing their favourite quote on their body, often about heroism or their heroes.

13. Peter Alexander McWilliams (August 5, 1949 – June 14, 2000) was an American self-help author who advocated for the legalisation of marijuana. The condition he died of is now treated by marijuana in the states that have realised the medical qualities of Marijuana. It is often quoted he was murdered by the state. For the people now benefiting from his struggles he would be considered a hero.

14. The human story, the heroes path. if you think you have fallen off yours look for your passion and change direction, you are your own hero.

15. And I have chosen to finish with one of my musical Heroes : David Bowies Heroes

Are there more heroes than ordinary people, for the worlds sake I hope so.

Namaste until Monday my dear friends

Pay as you Feel or Donate, its all Giving.

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Rod's World

I wanted to write todays blog on the pay as you feel ethos, there is a chain of restaurants in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia called Lentil as Anything who do just that, you eat there and pay what you can afford. There are not many pay as you feel quotes so I have had to move over to what it is to donate or give of our time.

I give a lot of the little money I have that I can afford to give. I support guide dogs as I have a blind friend, I support Green peace and several other organisations who do good stuff around the planet and volunteer my time as well as an English teacher and a Social media nerd.

I have chosen 15 quotes that i think will allow for some interesting comment. Here we go:

1. I have a friend Emeli who runs an organisation called Collective Potential whose target audience is corporate types who have realised that the $100,000 job does not provide the satisfaction they are looking for. Frankly they never do.

2. At least several times in out lives the chance will come to make a difference to someone. I once met a person in the street who told me that I wouldn’t remember him because he used to be a drug addict but that I had saved his life in the way I had treated him as a human being and not a number when I worked for the government welfare agency. He was right, I didn’t.

3. What makes the greatest difference, the child talking to the homeless man who has not spoken to someone in five days or the millionaire making a six figure tax deductible donation. I know which one does for me.

4. Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who, along with her father and other family members, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. She was imprisoned for her actions. Her most famous book, The Hiding Place, describes the ordeal. She certainly lived the meaning of the above quote.

5. As the example of the person I met in the street who said I had saved his life thorough my actions and that of children who talk to strangers like they know the person needs love these are both moments of the above.

6. This man is a frigging saint, enough said.

7. Can I put a Dolly Parton song in this blog , yes I can : Put a little Love IN Your Heart.

8. What would it take to make a statement like this. Anne Frank was a teenage jewish Schoolgirl hiding from the Nazi’s who wrote the Diaries of a Young Girl which was made into the iconic film The Diary of Anne Frank, she did not survive.

9. Sir Ken Robinson has done four TED talks on the danger of rigid education. He points out if you buy into the mainstream you will not know how to give your gifts to the planet, they will be drained out of you.

10. In the United states there are over 100,000 people waiting for live saving organs, why do we get buried intact when we could just as easily save another’s life. I don’t think your God would notice the difference.

11. There are people who are worshipped for what they gave in their lifetimes, this man is one of them, and yes we killed him as well.

12. What every person thinks who this happens for, they may not be able to say it physically or mentally.

13. It is always valued by someone, at times you will be rewarded in person, in other times it may be your next lifetime, if you believe in that sort of thing.

14.The Tao Te Ching, Daodejing, Dao De Jing, or Daode jing, also simply referred to as the Laozi, is a Chinese classic text. According to tradition, it was written around 6th century BC by the sage Laozi, a record-keeper at the Zhou dynasty court, by whose name the text is known in China. The text’s true authorship and date of composition or compilation are still debated, although the oldest excavated text dates back to the late 4th century BC. It is full of wisdom like this.

15. The great Buddhist concept of compassion as spread by the Dalai Lama is well spoken in this quote by Steve Maraboli, the worlds most quoted man.

Will the people who are the givers of the world withstand the attack of the takers,is it really the beginning of the Age of Aquarius as is being promoted on the internet, I hope so.

Namaste until Thursday, my dear friends.

Rod Has a Way with Words.

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Rod's World

I recently have been become resistant to a growing power within me. I went through a process with my mentor Arion Light the other day and he asked me where I was resisting it most. I answered in having my new business be a success My website.

Life is based on a premise for me that to change one must be willing to step forward or your life will keep teaching you lessons until you get them. I had worked in Federal Government service until my heart told me to to leave and I did not listen and was retired never to work again.

During this time I have kept up my knowledge of editing in all its facets as I was an editor of a National Development journal back in the early 80’s. I have had a love of words my whole life and am very good at expressing them even to the point of getting my cigarette money at high school by writing other peoples essays for them. So in retirement my friends who run businesses said why don’t you start your own as they were willing to pay me to do what I was doing for them for nothing.

So what does Power mean to us, I have chosen 15 rather different quotes on the subject, lets begin our journey.

1. Knowledge gives you power when you are partaking in interactions on a daily basis, but if you have no enthusiasm for the subject the power involved tends to wane over time.

2. My business started off with a flourish, I am now working on my determination to keep going in the face of no results from my actions.

3. The only thing that is certain is our life that is it will change, we have to realise at times our mind will not want to do this as it will be uncomfortable and what our mind loves most is being comfortable.

4. In the process I mentioned at the start of this blog, Arion asked me to look at what I was no being passionate about that I loved. I think Midnights Oils Power And the Passion expresses this the best for me. Surprisingly the lead singer Peter Garrett succumbed to the power of becoming a federal politician and gave up many of his passions.

5. You cannot locate real power outside yourself, this is a lesson well learnt by many after seeking it through their career status, their amount of possessions and then they reach a point of dissatisfaction and begin the journey within.

6. Abraham Lincoln February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. He was one of the great examples of what a man can do with power if they do it with character.

7. Power is defined as follows:

Someone with power has physical strength or they’re in control of things. So a weakling who’s in charge of a business still has a lot of power.

Power comes from the Latin word potere, which means “to be able.” But things with power are much more than able — they’re able to exert a lot of force. “The powers that be” are those who hold authority, and “the power behind the throne” refers to the people who exert influence without being formally in charge. When used as a verb, power means “to supply with mechanical or electrical energy,” as in a nuclear-powered submarine. It is not very useful if you are going through life asleep.

8. “Do I dare Disturb the universe?”
― T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, Prufrock and Other Poems sums up what governments do not want people to know, that they really do have the power if they are willing to take it.

9. Jimi Hendrix only lived to be 28 years old, he was one of the magic bus people along with Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, iconic figures of their time who sang and spoke about the greatest power being Love. Here is Jimi’s opus to it Power of Love.

10. Reclaiming your Power can return you to being back on track in all areas of your life, in owning that you are off in one and doing what is needed to restore balance you are actually working on all areas.

11. When you stand in your power, your Sparkle shines through. All the colours of the rainbow included. Sparkle was a film made in 1976 and remade in 2012 that was a huge success with African American audiences loosely based on the life of Diana Ross and the Supremes Filmclip.

12. The halls of Power are not an easy climb for Women, on the way there they have many bricks thrown at them, its what they do with them that leads to the final result.

13. Many people fall by the wayside when it comes to the abuse of the power they have been gifted by their position. They did not handle the responsibility that came with the position, something I feel a bit in my business , I am learning to provide the level required.

14. John Ray was an environmentalist from the 16th century, he is best remembered for this quote around the power that comes with being considered beautiful.

15. The Power stance is part of a TED talk by Amy Cuddy that 32,154,177 have watched so it must be very informative on the subject of power : Amy’s Ted Talk. Hunched shoulders are not a sign of power

My gifts to people from my business are Proof reading, Website Polishing, Copy Editing, Slogan writing and Research. Contact and Like my Rod Has a Way with Words Facebook Page.

Namaste until Monday my dear friends.