By Jade Small

Surfing is not just a sport, it’s a perspective. It’s a way of life. Yes, that sounds dramatic, but hear me out. Surfing can teach you life lessons you won’t learn anywhere else. Let me share a few with you.

They attack their days

Early morning is usually the best time for waves and the ideal time to awaken the body so many surfers get up early before work to squeeze in a session. It shows that you like to start your days off right and that you can make room for your passions alongside your responsibilities. Surfers live a carpe diem lifestyle – who doesn’t want a bit of that in their life?

Not all hard work earns you a paycheck

Perhaps this follows the preceding post on love. But the phrase “labor of love” is a good one. Aside from a minuscule percentage of professionals, surfing will not make you rich. Sure, there are jobs related to surfing that allows you the freedom to surf, but you will find very few people who make a living simply for going out and surfing. You have to put in your time. There are no shortcuts. Your reward isn’t money. This is a very powerful lesson, showing that...

Source: www.collective-evolution.com | Original Post Date: March 21, 2014 – 

After hearing these facts about the conditions that animals are forced to endure on factory farms you might be displeased to learn that 99% of all of the meat that is sold in the U.S. comes from factory farms (1), something to keep in mind.

*Warning: Some of the images used are graphic* 

I know that these can be very hard to look at, it was hard enough to do the research for the article. However, if this is what it takes for people to wake up and realize exactly what they are contributing to, then I am all for it, as it needs to be done. I know a number of people who have gone completely Vegan after watching the graphic film “Earthlings,” which exposes the inner workings of factory farms. People are simply unaware of...

Source: www.mashable.com | Original Post Date: September 14, 2010 –

In the land of all-night samba clubs and soccer fanatics, Brazil is throwing its famously high-energy spirit into the untested waters of online democracy. Multimillion dollar budgets are being handed over to online “town halls,” and the federal government is crowdsourcing legislative consulting through interactive web tools.

While the effectiveness of e-democracy has yet to be proven, there are some signs of more equitable resource distribution and increased participation. Here, we’ll take a look at participatory budgeting, e-legislation, and why the United States Congress has been more hesitant to adopt such technologies.

A History of Democratic Innovation

Readers who are somewhat familiar with Brazil’s tattered history of corruption may have difficulty swallowing ...

Source: www.theeconomiccollapseblog.com | Original Post Date: May 6, 2013 – 

If the American people truly understood how the Federal Reserve system works and what it has done to us, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately.  It is a system that was designed by international bankers for the benefit of international bankers, and it is systematically impoverishing the American people.  The Federal Reserve system is the primary reason why our currency has declined in value by well over 95 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger over the past 100 years.  The Fed creates our “booms” and our “busts”, and they have done an absolutely miserable job of managing our economy.  But why do we need a bunch of unelected private bankers to manage our economy and print our money for us in the first place?  Wouldn’...

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com | Original Post Date: October 18, 2013 –

Why do we do the things we do? Despite our best attempts to “know thyself,” the truth is that we often know astonishingly little about our own minds, and even less about the way others think. As Charles Dickens once put it, “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

Psychologists have long sought insights into how we perceive the world and what motivates our behavior, and they’ve made enormous strides in lifting that veil of mystery. Aside from providing fodder for stimulating cocktail-party conversations, some of the most famous psychological experiments of the past century reveal universal and often surprising truths about human nature. Here are...