This surprising little video is about Glasgow roadliner Thomas Lilley, a man who paints signs and marks on roads freehand in molten thermoplastic. It is a reflection on uncelebrated jobs that most of us remain oblivious to, that possess —and often yield — their own quiet poetry, and an essential message…
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(Video link here.) One short minute of perfection: Herbie Hancock recounts the BIG life lesson he got by example from Miles Davis, when Hancock played what he thought was a seriously WRONG note during a gorgeous riff.
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While walking with a friend, I stopped to open a crumpled piece of paper lying on the ground. When he looked at me puzzled I said: You never know what interesting messages you’ll find if you look. I come across amazing things all the time hidden in plain sight… The next day he sent a photo of…
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Right now you’re probably asking yourself how those geniuses over at Improvised Life keep coming up with great material day after day? We’d like to show you what did NOT make the cut for today (that STILL has meaty grooves)…
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Photographer/filmmaker Gigi de la Torre sent us this sign with an incisive observation:
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In conversation, I never call Improvised Life a blog. The Blogging world is an ubiquitous, saturated and aspirational one; most bloggers put their true opinions aside to survive. We are trying to do something different.
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When a hugely-talented and hard-working friend was savagely comparing her progress to other people — mostly strangers — whom she perceived to be way more successful, masterful, and able than she, I did an intervention (one that I do on myself as well).
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This photo of hunks of clay by Gentl and Hyers, made us wonder: What are we going to make today? And then we found this in Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art:
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For years writer Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek“, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, shaped our thinking and way of seeing — observing — the world around us. With her new book ‘The Abundance“, she has entered our minds again and is actively in the zeitgeist; her original, quirky, daring view of life continues to surprise, resonate…
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After we received the same poetry chain letter from two different friends, we felt ourselves resentful and beleaguered by the work it took. But we love the idea of emailing poems to friends. So we created a guilt-free, no-obligation, joy-based email.
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What if Age is Nothing But a Mind-Set in The Sunday Times Magazine describes the astonishing results of Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer‘s studies into the way routines and mental habits determine our behavior. We are especially taken with Langer’s unique practice of mindfulness, achievable without meditation:
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At our Instagram SignLaboratory, we post a lot of graffiti: messages scribbled by valiant, expressive, anonymous souls as they move around the city. It is a fine practice: seizing a moment to scratch a subversive message. They are, more often than not, uplifting. We hadn’t thought of the lineage of graffiti until a friend showed us…
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We have quite a few friends of various ages who have been having a rough time lately. Whether 23 years old or 73, it seems that no one is exempt from the stresses of a society that values individuals for their “profession”, and an economy in which it can be very difficult to find work — and expression —…
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This lovely image and commentary Girl Knew York reminded us of the practice of applying “random kindness” not only to others but to ourselves, and Stephen Levine’s principle of “soft eyes”.
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Bryan Landers, creator of the wonderful 3 Good Things app, has a lot of interesting ideas up his sleeve. At Medium, we found an article he’d written about making his own motivational phone wallpaper. His thinking is compelling and his method simple and easy. We tried it ourselves.
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On my office wall, I tape images that inspire, motivate, and hearten me. Recently, I taped up a greeting card that said PROCEED AS IF SUCCESS IS INEVITABLE. Although the words make great sense, they curiously had little impact…UNTIL something compelled me to pair it with a photo I’d clipped from a magazine: Big lesson in what a MOTIVATOR can be.
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When we wrote about navigating loss during th holidays, 80+-year-old skydiver Karrolyn Belkis pointed out something we hadn’t thought of: we feel loss daily. Things we love disappear, whether it be a person, an ability we had, a familiar place, a tree, a friend…something we rely on broke or fell apart or got lost. In answer to…
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A perfect question to jump out of bed with, or ask anytime of the day… …though we might add to it…
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(Video link here.) This video about 23-year-old Kanya Sesser, born without legs and abandoned as a child, says it all. She’s a wise woman. Here are our favorite bits:
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