26,667 people want to "Fall in Love" on 43 Things: #love2011

Our theme this week for "The Love Project" is goal-setting and one very popular Website that helps with goal setting is 43 Things.

This site is interesting because it helps you find other people who share your goals and then you can boost each other up, share your ideas about how you're accomplishing your goals, hold each other accountable, or simply lurk in the background, roaming around the site checking out what the 3million+ site members are talking about.

43 Things has added a new feature for New Year's Resolutions where you can plug in your resolutions and optionally get emailed a reminder (your choice of monthly, every 3 months, or next year.) You can share your list via email, on Facebook, and, as I mentioned above, find groups of people who share your goal.

Something you might find interesting: As of now, "Falling in Love" is the 7th most popular 2011 New Year's Resolution. There are a total of 26,667 people who have said they want to do it with 818 people having it as a New Year's Resolution.

I'm currently perusing the page enjoying reading the entries which vary from a simple smiley face to long paragraphs to bulletized lists. On the right there are some stats including one that says "On average this year takes 9 years to complete." Nine years?! I can help people do it in only one year! I'm seeing an awesome marketing opportunity to plug The Love Project, not to mention my book!

See ya later... I've got to go get 26,667 subscribers to this project and sell 26,667 copies of The Laptop Dancer Diaries: A Mostly True Story About Finding Love Again... (I've already got love... This year I'm going for fame and fortune. ;-) )

Spread the Love: Three great sites that will give you missions of love

It looks like I'm not the first one to think of this weekly assignment deal... For those of you looking for ideas for "love goals" for 2011, check out these three sites:

It Starts With Us sends it's members a weekly 15-minute mission, aimed at helping the world become a better place. This Week's Mission is to do a kindness for someone, such as shoveling their driveways. As a matter of fact, my neighbor did this for me the other day and it was such a happy surprise! A call it a kind act of shovelry!

Love Bomb team spends just 5 minutes once a week to leave a quick message of hope for someone who desperately needs it - and the results are absolutely incredible. This week's love bomb goes to a single mother of a 4-year-old with a brain tumor.

Love Drop team members suggest someone they know who needs a little financial help, and once a month surprise that person or family by paying off a medical bill, mortgage payment, or giving them something they need.

Love Drop just started with the new year - Jan. 1, 2011. The first project takes place in Chicago - a project to help a family who's house burned down.



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How You Can Help
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This project is all about coming up with creative and fun ways to make a difference for someone. Here's what you can do to make our first Love Drop special for Jill and her family:

• Join the team - Become a member by paying whatever you want. Even $1.00.


• Join the blogger network - Blog about our Love Drops once a month! It's easy, it's rewarding, and it REALLY helps spread the word (which in turn helps the families!). Love Drop will give you all the content you need.


• Give a gift or provide a service - Gift cards, household goods, football cards/jerseys for the boys, web design services, pampering gifts for Jill, etc. (email all ideas/questions to team (at) lovedrop.us, and they'll make it happen)
  

Assignment 2: What are your Love Goals? Looprah Woo advice #love2011

The theme for Week 2 is Goal-Setting. Yes, yes... not very original, but there is SO much great stuff around goal setting and this is the time of year we're all thinking about it... So, the prompt for this week is:

What are you going to do in 2011 to bring more love (see note below) into your life? What goal-setting techniques and resources are you going to use to make that happen?

Note: Things you do to love and accept yourself are a good place to start. Hence the classic: "Lose Weight" is a perfectly acceptable "Love Goal" if you think you'll love yourself more if you weigh less... )

You can take part in this assignment in many ways. You can write about it on a blog and tell me about it. You can use one of the tools I'm going to tell you about this week. Or (my favorite) you can create a video! Here's one I really like from Supreme Mistress Looprah Woo:

Watch for Website Wednesday when I feature blogs and products about goal-setting and New Years resolutions.

Oh! And, of course, a very appropriate "love goal" would be to subscribe to The Love Project 2011 and spread the word!

Cut and Paste the following to your status on Facebook, Twitter, or other sites: Join The Love Project: http://bit.ly/aJWbG0 #love2011

Friday Funnies: Spoof of Affirmation Video #love2011

Well... I did not get a whole lot of links from all of you out there in the Cyber-world on my first assignment of love2011. But I do have to give a HUGE thank you to girlnutkin in the BA for her promotion of the project ! (She is awesome!) And I also give a big thank you to all those who participated by letting me video tape theme and post on my blog. In fact (I just decided this now) I'm going to send a special autographed copy of The Laptop Dancer Diaries (certain to hit the best-seller's list now that I've been doing affirmations), to.... drum roll please... Valerie, for her awesome 2011 affirmation video!

Now, the bunny, plant, and aging Jessica in the videos below did not (necessarily) do these as part of my assignment, but I have found YouTube had a good number of "Jessica Affirmation Spoofs." Here are a few for your viewing enjoyment..

Are Affirmations Too Woo-Woo? #love2011

To borrow an expression from my new Blogger-Gal-Pal, girl nutkin in the BA, I've been examining my "woo-woo" quotient.

On her post, yhd for 2011, girl nutkin (aka Shirley Rivera) talks about Sonia Choquette's book, Your Heart's Desire: Instructions for creating the life you really want.

That girl nutkin always fills her posts with SO much information... My goodness! She has quite the active mind and blog!

Shirley says:

I consider this a woo-woo book - a kind of spiritual and law of attraction thing

She also says one of the nine principals stated in the book is:

send clear messages to your subconscious mind. repeat them and make sure they are positive (gain the support of your subconscious mind)

Sounds a lot like affirmations, doesn't it?

Shirley, in her own unique style of writing that you just gotta love, talks about mixing the "woo-woo" with the "non-woo-woo" of a "cubeopolis" life. (girl nutkin could write her own dictionary, I think!)

In any case, upon thinking about this, I've decided I'm a very "non-woo-woo" person. I'm logical and analytical... a classic engineer. If something starts to sound a little "woo-woo" to me (astrology or psychics for example) I have a big woo-woo-alarm going off in my head.

Even though I own a copy of "Law of Attaction for Dummies," I raise a skeptical eyebrow at all this talking to the "Universe" and "as long as we believe it will happen," kind of stuff. I know well enough that I can do all the right things, have all the confidence in the world, and still suffer from disappointments. I don't believe that affirmations are all it takes to get what we want in this world. It takes dedication and hard work, and even then, we still may not get what we ask "the universe" for.

But I do believe strongly in three things associated with affirmations:

1. Positivity


2. Confidence


3. Faith

I suppose faith would be considered "woo-woo" but, yes, that's on my list as something that helps us achieve our goals. Whether we're believing in "The Universe," a higher being, or ourselves, I think if we have that faith... in whatever woo-woo is for us... we are more likely to be successful. And there is no doubt in my mind that having a positive attitude and confidence will give us a better chance of succeeding in whatever we set out to do. I think with these three things... positivity, confidence, and faith, you can do just about anything.

So don't pooh-pooh the woo-woo. It's not altogether cuckoo.

Website Wednesday: Websites about Affirmations - #love2011

The Love Project has gotten off to a good start. I'm having a lot of fun with the assignment for Week 1 - emmulating the video of a little girl who enthusiastically gives herself affirmations. Now this week, the videos I've collected have been primarily from my friends. I hope in the future, bloggers and others who are joining into this project will send me links to their own sites which I can share on Website Wednesday. It's not too late to be added. Just add a comment and I will add you to the list.

But even though I haven't gotten links from all of you (yet), I found oodles of cool sites, products, and blogs about affirmations that I want to share. There are actually so many that there are way too many for list all of them, but here are a sampling:

Products, eBooks, and Websites

Power Affirmations - This one will let you download affirmations in .mp3 format. First you can take an assessment to see which kind of affirmations will help you the most, so you can download the

Why Affirmations Fail and the Building Blocks of Great Affirmations - Fans of Law of Attraction and the Secret will like this one.

Mind Zoom Affirmations Subliminal Software

Thoughts Empowered - eBook about the use of affirmations to achieve positive thinking

The Custom Mind Movie Series - uses cutting edge subliminal visual and audio technology to help people manifest their dreams and desires by helping them to activate the Law of Attraction
Self Esteem Secrets Revealed - Learn what it takes to build self-esteem in 7 easy steps

Creative Affirmations - site in which you can sign up for free daily affirmations, newsletters and read articles and techniques about affirmations.

Blogs about Affirmations

Today's Confetti: I can do anything good. - Today, she blogged about the Jessica video, too!

Gratefulkim's Blog: Resolution, schmesoltion, Affirmations & Anniversaries - Interesting and well-written insights

God, Self, Bliss: Affirmations

Beth Parker's Art Blog: Ralphie - Frog Painting

Directories

Not enough?
Affirmations Websites - This page lists other websites (lots of them) about affirmations!

How to Use Affirmations Effectively - #love2011

The theme of the Love Project this week is Affirmations. As I mull over this whole project, I think what I want to do is have a Saturday Assignment, and Wednesday Website of the Week, a weekly "How To" Post, and a Friday Funny Post all related to the theme... At least we'll start that way and see how it goes. So here is your "How To" post about Affirmations.

There are an amazing number of resources available on Affirmations (Stay tuned for Website Wednesday!) so you have a lot of options, from daily email subscriptions to software that will run little messages across your screen, to strategically placed sticky notes, hypnosis, subliminal messages in your sleep, to simply waking up each morning with a positive attitude.

As to how to use them effectively, here are some quick tips from a more comprehensive paper on the topic: Daily Positive Affirmations: Achieve Anything Your Heart Desires With Positive Affirmation.

* Use positivity. Avoid negative words like "can't", "don't", "won't." So, instead of saying, "I won't eat like a pig," you could say "I will eat like a sweet little bird." (Beware that birds eat a lot.)

* Use present tense. So I guess I was wrong on the last one. Instead of "I will eat like a sweet little bird." say "I eat like a sweet little bird." (Oh... one other note related to birds and current events, I read today about 3000 birds falling out of the sky in Arkansas, so perhaps birds are the wrong animal altogether..)

* Use brevity. Let's forget about the birds: "I eat healthy foods."

* Positive affirmations must be uttered and thought repeatedly: "I eat healthy foods. I eat healthy foods. I eat healthy foods. I eat healthy foods. I eat healthy foods." (you get the idea.)

* Repetition leads to auto-suggestion which is like brainwashing. However, before getting all concerned about "drinking the kool-aid" the difference is that you are the one in control of your thoughts, not some psychopath. (I guess this is sort of like brainwashing yourself, but only into doing something you really want to do...)

* Be passionate about the goal in mind. If you really don't care about eating healthy foods, repeating "I eat healthy foods" a bunch of times is probably only going to annoy your mind.

* Believe in your affirmation. If you don't really think you can eat healthy foods, you probably won't.

There you have it! For some reason, I'm hungry for a healthy breakfast!

Link Love 2011 - A Site for People Who Love Blogging - #love2011

I'm very excited about The Love Project 2011... I've been faithfully repeating my affirmations:

The Love Project will be a great success!

I will spread love throughout the world!

I will give and receive love openly and abundantly!

I will get RICH!

....uh.. wait a minute? Get RICH? That seems like one of those... "which of these things is not like the other" kind of statements. (Unless, of course, we are talking about our latest heart-throb named Rich...) Wishing to get rich seems selfish, not loving...

But, hey, I'm human. It would be great to make money, too, while I'm spreading around the love. I don't expect to get rich, but I do hope to get another book out of this project, and let's face it, to sell a book, you have to promote it. And to promote your book, you have to get publicity.. and that's where blogging comes in. (Sef-Promotion Side note: if you're looking for a quick read about a woman who makes a lot of embarrassing blunders in dating, check out The Laptop Dancer Diaries.)

Now I don't expect to get rich from selling my books or blogging, but some people are very successful at it, so this year I am working on getting more serious about increasing my blog traffic.

Well, one of the sites I stumbled across while looking for love websites (it turns out I'm not the only one using the #love2011 on Twitter) was GatherSuccess Link Love 2011. Though this isn't a site about love, it's a site that will help bloggers out by spreading the "link love." The site looks like it has some useful information about how bloggers can really monetize their blogs.

So, if you are a blogger, or a blogger wannabe, first of all... join the Love Project by subscribing to my site and watching for weekly prompts. I will add a link on my blog roll for you. And then check out GatherSuccess for some additional ideas for monetization.

This is going to be the year we are going to love and GET RICH! YAY!

Video Affirmations: "2011 WILL be the Best Year Ever!"

I've been having a lot of fun with Assignment #1 from The Love Project: Create an affirmation video about great things that will happen in 2011.

I know the video quality is bad (another goal of mine is to get a better camera and to become a better photographer!) but I love the people who participated.

First up was Mike, a guy who blogs at Cookbook Diaries of a Single Dad. Looks like his blog name will be changing in 2011, thanks to his exciting news:



Next was Jerry.. a lead guitarist of Blind Child Rockin' Blues Band,



Chris, from 5280 Magic, knows his magic is going to take off in 2011:



Christie knows that the hardships of 2010 needed to happen in order for her to be where she is right now:



Valerie took on the assignment with gusto! A nurse who works with people suffering with addictions, she's grateful for a life free of addiction... (well..almost!)



And finally, young Marissa, charmed us with her positive attitude and confidence!



I absolutely loved the way these people didn't shy away from the camera. They humored me with my assignment, complete with the cheers and give-it-your-all enthusiasm. Their smiles were infectious!

Another thing I noticed (even when I made my own video) is that you don't get the same feeling if you say "I want to do..." or "I'll try and do.." or "I hope to do..." Say "I WILL do it" "2011 WILL be a great year." When you speak strongly and with confidence, everyone feels the positive vibes and you make the world a better place.

I hope these videos motivate some of you out there in cyberspace to make your own YouTube video. Leave me the link in a comment or use the Twitter Tag #love2011 so we can find you. And remember, 2011 WILL be the Best Year Ever!

The Love Project Begins with New Years Affirmations! #love2011

It's the New Year and I'm excited to be starting something I've been thinking about for awhile now: Love Project 2011! I'll be giving out weekly "assignments" designed to give and receive love. We're going to start (at least for the first month or two) with focusing on self-love.

Assignment: Make a video, Jessica-style, giving yourself positive affirmations, exhibiting energy and optimism for 2011.

Extra Credit: Take something you've complained about in the past, and turn it around into something positive.



A couple of weeks ago, I suggested a video assignment based on a video of a little girl, Jessica, who was giving herself positive affirmations. I challenged all of you to do the same, but... some how did not receive any links to videos! What's up with that? Never fear... I've convinced some of my friends to do some and I'll be posting those tomorrow.

But for those of you who want to get started now and need a grown-up example, here's mine:



Not ready to share your video? OK... Just do it for yourself. Look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself how great you are and that it's going to be a fantastic year! Do it with energy! Cheer YAY at the end! It's going to happen...