Sunday Smorgasbord: 10 Resources to learn new skills and knowledge

What is Sunday Smorgasbord?

In Sunday Smorgasbord we celebrate all the skills, talents, resources, hobbies and ideas that humans can use to grow and prosper. You have everything you need to get started right now. So get up and start creating! Because there’s no magic pill for life.

*************************

This Week’s Sunday Smorgasbord: 10 Resources to learn new skills and knowledge

The concept of Sane & Satisfied rests on the foundation of Self Education. If you know what your skills are and understand how to use them and are motivated to learn more skills you can overcome any obstacle and are better able to create a happy and fulfilling life. So today, I thought I would do a roundup of my favorite online resources that I have used over the years to learn new skills and gain knowledge.

Free Books

Project Gutenburg – Filled with free books ranging from agriculture and science to classical fiction.

Bookbub.com – Offers deals on Kindle books most of which are discounted to FREE. You can browse their website or sign up for a daily email and specify what categories of books you are most interested in. I can’t wait to get my email everyday

Free Books App – Has a lot of the same books at Project Gutenburg but I like how the app works and that I can read books right on my iPad or iPhone. Book choices range from classics to Philosophy and even a list of books that have been banned at one time or another.

Free/Inexpensive Education

MIT OpenCourseWare – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers many of its courses for free complete with course outline, syllabus and in some cases outlines, notes and recommended reading list. Classes range from math to the arts.

Lynda.com – Features quality video tutorials that teach about all things computer related from web and software coding to Photoshop. Learn how to expertly create flyers in Publisher or InDesign for your new business or help your child learn how to film a documentary. Unfortunately Lynda.com is not free. Their cheapest plan is $21 a month but compared to taking traditional classes or workshops at $100 – $200 it’s a steal.

YouTube – I have learned how to do a half double crochet, how to cut my own hair and how to fold an origami elephant all on YouTube. It’s fast and easy to use. Simply enter in the topic you want learn about and bam! at least a dozen or more videos to choose from.

iTunes U – Another great app to have on your iPad or iPhone. Learn about a wide range of topics from business to foreign language.

Quick References

Dictionary.com & Thesaurus.com – I love how Dictionary.com has a word of the day and information about the origin and meaning. I also love how easy it is to find alternative words using the thesaurus.

Facebook Groups – I have gotten invaluable information from some of the groups I’m in on Facebook. I just joined the Holistic Pet Care group to learn more providing my cats with natural remedies and care. I’m also a member of a homebirthing group that has helped me tremendously in preparing for my homebirth. You can find groups just by searching for topics you are interested in in the search bar within Facebook. You can also ask your Facebook friends if they are a part of any groups you might be interested in.

Google Search – The fastest way to find answers is just do a Google Search. Whether you want to know how something is made or what year something happened you are bound to find the answer quickly.

 

And here are some quotes about self education to get you motivated to learn!

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” ― Isaac Asimov

“I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.” ― Ray Bradbury

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.” ― Frank Zappa

“Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” ― Beatrix Potter

“All I have learned, I learned from books.” ― Abraham Lincoln

So what are you waiting for? Go out and learn something new!

Home Spa Saturday: DIY Face Scrub

Relaxing, pampering, and taking time for ourselves is an simple yet often over-looked step to being Sane & Satisfied. So the third Saturday of every month I will feature a DIY spa treatment. It doesn’t take much time or effort to enjoy luxurious treats at home without spending a fortune. Take a break and enjoy

***********

Today’s Home Spa Saturday treat is a super easy face scrub. Face scrubs are great to add to any skin care routine because they feel wonderful while applying them and leave your skin soft and free of dirt and nastiness.

You only need a few ingredients which you probably already have on-hand

Baking Soda & Water
The easiest homemade face scrub is to mix baking with water to form a paste. Spread on your face, avoiding your eyes, and let it dry. Then just rinse off well and pat dry. That’s it. Baking soda is a great, natural and inexpensive way to clean and soften your skin. This is actually kind of a cross between a scrub and a mask.

Baking Soda & Orange Juice
This works the same as the baking soda and water recipe. The orange juice adds some vitamin c and it smells yummy.

Sugar, Sunflower Oil and Essential Oil
Mix the sugar and Sunflower oil to form a paste. Add one drop essential oil of your choice and mix. Lightly massage onto your face and relax for a few minutes. Rinse well and pat dry. You can use olive oil instead of Sunflower oil but the Sunflower Oil has vitamin E which is great for skin. Make sure you do a test on a small area of your face first. The first time I used this recipe on me I put too much essential oil in it and it started to burn. It didn’t damage my skin but it hurt for a while.

Keep extra scrub in a jar with a tight lid. If it dries out just add more water or oil. Easy Peasy I usually do my face scrub once or twice a week. I find that my skin stays silky smooth for about 3 days. But I wouldn’t do a scrub any more than twice a week.

As with everything you make at home make sure to wash your hands before working with the ingredients and obviously make sure you don’t use anything you are allergic to. Other then that these recipes are pretty fool-proof.

I hope you enjoy your quick and simple spa treat. Now I’m going to make some of my own

The Art of Arguing

I have gotten into my fair share of arguments. I won’t deny it. And I have noticed a pattern: Most people just do not understand how to argue.

I’ve been told that arguing is bad, disrespectful, a waste of time and offensive. Arguing is such a taboo in fact that we have come up with various alternative words to describe what’s basically a disagreement. Discussion, debate, dispute, quarrel and squabble are just a few. And even though these all mean pretty much the same thing none of them comes close to eliciting emotion like the word “argument” can.

Dictionary.com defines argue as: 1. to present reasons for or against a thing and 2. to contend in oral disagreement; dispute. It defines argument as: 1. an oral disagreement; verbal opposition; contention; altercation and 2. a discussion involving differing points of view; debate etc. For such an innocent definition many people tend to do anything they can to avoid an argument and look down upon those who willingly get involved in them.

I think most people avoid arguments because arguments are largely misunderstood and many people don’t have the necessary skills or experience to have constructive arguments. To have a successful argument you just need 2 things: both parties need to be confident in their position of the argument and have supporting reasons for their position. That’s it.

No matter where you go in life you will be confronted with ideas you don’t agree with. And while you don’t have to attend every argument you encounter chances are there have been and will be many times when you can’t or shouldn’t avoid an argument. Humans will always disagree. We will always have differing views and ways of doing things and solutions to problems. These confrontations and problems don’t fix themselves.

So what is the Art of Arguing? The Art of Arguing is to remember that without arguing humanity would be stifled. Arguing is about learning more about yourself and your own beliefs. It helps you learn how to think and reason. The Art of Arguing is that through this conflict we are able to solve problems, create the future, get to the heart of matters, let off some steam, release bottled up resentment and correct misunderstandings. Arguing is really a beautiful thing. And if you approach it like that instead of hiding from it or treating it like a 3-headed monster you might find arguing isn’t so scary after all.

Book Review Wednesday: The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss seems like the most controversial book in the self-help industry. Timothy is an odd duck. It doesn’t help that he makes a living experimenting on himself either. And he doesn’t seem to have any regard for other people’s rules. I’ve read a lot of reviews on The 4 Hour Workweek ranging from gushing, foot-kissing fealty to one-liners, sprinkled with 4 Letter Words. Actually most of the reviews fell into these two extremes. Apparently we either love or hate Tim Ferriss.

Most of the criticism of the book centers around the fact that “it’s impossible to only work 4 hours a week” and even Timothy admits that he works way more than 4 hours a week. But Tim didn’t write the book for people like himself. He wrote it for people who are working way too many hours at a job they hate. This book gives tools and advice on how to streamline your current endeavors while building a new kind of business and teaching you how not to fall into the same time-suck traps you did before. For someone who runs a drop-ship t-shirt company or sells a how-to manual, working only 4 hours a week is quite doable.

I admit that it sounds unbelievable to be able to work only 4 hours a week. But as Tim explains (and as Sane & Satisfied tries to promote) we are conditioned to believe many things. We think that we need to have a meeting for everything. We think that work must be from 9-5. Managers believe it’s better to have workers be at work for their entire shift instead of giving them the incentive to leave early by working more productively. We believe that the best way to get paid is by the hour. And we are drowning in minutia. Most of the stuff we work on during the day is busy work and doesn’t bring us any closer to our goals.

That is the problem that The 4-Hour Workweek tries to solve. How to strip down all this crap in order to get to what’s actually meaningful. The book focuses on four steps: Definition, Elimination, Automation and Liberation. By defining where you are right now, eliminating what you don’t need, automating or delegating what you do need you can find liberation and work only 4 hours a week. Or at least work less than you do now.

I’ve actually read The 4 Hour Workweek 2 and a half times and it took me until the last half time to understand the stripped-down-naked point of the 300 page book: Am I being productive or just busy? This doesn’t make it a bad book though. On the contrary, it makes it a complex (albeit long-winded) instruction manual on how to get the things done that mean the most to you.

The 4 Hour Workweek is basically a blueprint for a more productive life wrapped in Self Help Goop and tied with a Sensational Bow. Which is really sad. I’m sure Tim wouldn’t have sold as many books if he wrapped it in anything else but the packaging clouds some pretty awesome insights into the way we work and the things we value. We could all use Tim’s philosophy to some degree to help us enjoy our lives more.

I encourage you to read The 4 Hour Workweek if you haven’t yet and reread it if it left a slimy coating on your tongue the first time. Ignore the sensational surroundings and think of it instead like a toolbox. Take the tools you need and leave the rest. But use those tools as if your life depended on them which it kind of does.

Happy Monday: In Case You Missed It

While my oatmeal is cooking on the stove I thought I would recap what went on at Sane & Satisfied Blog last week.

Hide Your Crazy – We talked about the fine line between being respectful and hiding who you truly are.

Freebie Friday: Sane & Satisfied Badge – Download a free badge to use on your blog, in email and in social media to show others that you are Sane & Satisfied.

DIY Health Plan – I help you create your own health plan that actually works for you.

Sunday Smorgasbord: Entrepreneur Games – A list of games that teach you about business and entrepreneurship. Take a break and play one today

Ok, I think my oatmeal is ready now. Gotta go.

Sunday Smorgasbord: Entrepreneur Games

What is Sunday Smorgasbord?

In Sunday Smorgasbord we celebrate all the skills, talents, resources, hobbies and ideas that humans can use to grow and prosper. You have everything you need to get started right now. So get up and start creating! Because there’s no magic pill for life.

*************************

This Week’s Sunday Smorgasbord: Entrepreneur Games

I’ve been playing this game on my iPad called Fiona’s Flowers. It’s a time management/simulation/entrepreneur game where you run a flower shop. You start off with a few tasks like watering, planting and pruning your flowers. You also sell them out of your shed. The goal is to make enough money to advance through different garden contests.

The Sane & Satisfied DIY Health Plan

Sane & Satisfied people should cringe at the word diet. It brings to mind starving oneself. It’s also interesting how the word diet was originally a noun used like “a Mediterranean diet” or “a low sugar diet”. Now it’s a verb. “I’m dieting” or “I’m going on a diet”. Often times people forget to define what sort of diet they are going on.

Whatever your health goals are this year, please don’t fall into the same trend as last year and the year before and the year before. Which is to say don’t listen to the hype, marketing and propaganda from “health gurus” who bank on the fact that thoughts of dieting and exercise are flooding the minds of Americans right now.

Freebie Friday: Sane & Satisfied Badge

This month’s Freebie Friday is a Sane & Satisfied badge. Show people you are Sane & Satisfied and invite them to be Sane & Satisfied too. Share the love on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, website and even in your emails.

Hide Your Crazy…or Don’t

“Go and fix your make up, girl, it’s just a break up
Run and hide your crazy and start actin’ like a lady
‘Cause I raised you better, gotta keep it together
Even when you fall apart
But this ain’t my mama’s broken heart”

I really like this song from Miranda Lambert called “Mama’s Broken Heart”. And while it’s fun to sing in my PT while cruising through the country side of Midwest Illinois it got me thinking about Sane & Satisfied.

We are told all the time, from many different angles, to “hide our crazy”. Anger is looked down upon and those who can’t handle their anger are sent to “anger management” classes. Jealousy is treated with equal intolerance. We are basically encouraged to hide our crazy emotions.

Wordless Wednesday: Marathon

Today’s Wordless Wednesday comes from dlritter over at Stock Xchng.

I am 31 weeks pregnant and when I met with my doula and friend, Hannah, last week she mentioned that I should treat these last couple months like I’m training for a marathon. I’ve never been good at training for anything. I’ve never been good at sticking with a routine either. I’ve never wanted to run a marathon before. I think runners are a bit crazy, actually So it’s been a bit difficult to get in that mindset. This is my first pregnancy and I’m having a homebirth and I know it’s important to do everything I can to make sure my labor and birth go well.