This post is mostly meant to be an homage to one of my top influences for building this site and starting this blog.
A couple of years ago, Neil Pasricha started a blog called “1000 Awesome Things”.
(Click on this link to check it out http://www.1000AwesomeThings.com)
(Scroll to the bottom of this post for the link to his TedTalk. Probably the best one I’ve ever seen.)
I’ll let you research the story on your own if you want, but to make a long story short, Neil took the simple things in life and elaborated on them just a little bit. Enough to make you want to finish what he wrote, but not so long that you feel inundated by, yet another, long winded diatribe on why “ice cream in the summertime” is so awesome. We know that. The topics he chooses as muses (you like that rhyme scheme?) are things that you and I both notice, but never bring to light and certainly don’t interject into a conversation. I planted some dough in one book and bought the other, because although I’ve been a subscriber to his blog for a long time, the books eventually stop coming out if nobody buys them. So I got one for my wife. She is not a reader, but anybody can read two pages. Especially when those two pages create a chemical reaction in your brain that makes you want more and more awesome things to be brought to your attention. Start with this book, go check out the blog, and there will be more to come. He is just getting started. And so am I, right in his book.
If you’re fortunate enough to pick up this book in the first place, count your lucky stars, because you are about to put on a new pair of glasses with perfect vision. As you start to thumb through the pages you are amazed by the simplistic, yet clever writing style implemented through out the entire book. But then it seems as though somebody has left a book marker here. Is this somebody else’s book?
NOPE! This is your book! This is “extra” yours, because you just found money right in the pages!
Now, how awesome is that? You just picked up a book about awesome and you were blessed with some awesomeness all of your own, all in the same trip to the book store. This just one more reason to keep buying books in physical form. There’s something to be said for thumbing through a great book. Enjoy this one 🙂
CLICK HERE! To watch Neil discuss, in detail, the birth of one of the greatest blogs of all time.
http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_pasricha_the_3_a_s_of_awesome.html
i found money today 
I just finished watching his TEDTalk. That was, for lack of another word, awesome!
Oh my god yes, how great is that? How the site came to be? I love how he pulled something great from a tragic time in his life. People curse pain, but that’s how it always seems to happen. Triumph over adversity.
I’m an honest person, and as an honest person, I could never keep that $5 without deep feelings of guilt, so I would turn it in to the cashier (who would keep it or it would end up in the store’s coffers). It just doesn’t seem like a great idea to me. Sorry!
You are entitled to your opinion, however, you are the only person that has seen this site that doesn’t get pumped by the idea of finding money. Hey, it’s not for everybody 🙂 I hope, for your sake, that somebody else finds it. So you don’t have to be stuck with the guilt of finding $5 😉
It’s fine that you’d want to turn the money in to the cashier, but why would you knock down what IFMT is doing in the process? That’s unnecessary.
I appreciate you supporting the cause Dienna! …but you have to let people hate. It’s good for fuel, plus there’s no way they would hand it in to the cashier. Let’s be honest. Some people just have so guilty of a conscious that they can’t even keep money they found hypothetically. It’s all good. You’re a good egg. Keep coming back 🙂
Little amounts of money I don’t feel guilty about keeping. Its the big money that I wouldn’t keep. I once found $150 in a parking lot of a bowling alley. I turned it in right away thinking whoever lost it needed it way more than I did. The people I went bowling with thought I was crazy.
I was thinking about Michelles comment for a long while. I do see the point that is made, the question is are we willing to consider the possibility that somebody left that money there simply to make us happy?
I think it’s great when we realise that people really care, realising that people who don’t even know us care makes at least me very happy. This brings to mind Tony Robbins and his story about the night when somebody came on Thanksgiving and gave his family food. According to Tony his father saw it as meaning that he was worthless while Tony himself thought something like “food, what a concept!” 🙂
Tony’s choice to see the event in this way led to himself doing the same thing on a huge scale. This in turn might inspire even more people to do something similar.
When we realise others care we might give ourselves greater freedom to express our own love. Still, someone must do it first for others to understand it really is a possibility and because of this I love ideas like this “I found money today”. When do we really know something is possible? When we’ve done it.
So life has a whole lot to do with what possibilities we are willing to consider, not so much what actually happens but what we make of it. We should not ignore the suffering but neither should we ignore the sweet fruits of life.
I have my whole life believed that happiness is a choice, there are people who “have it all” and are unhappy but there are also those with similar lives who are happy. There are people who barely have food to live and are unhappy but there are also those in similar situations who are happy. This leads to the conclusion that happiness is not an result of events (not at least completely), unless we believe that of course.
I must share with you one decision I made when I was really little, when I was little I made the decision I’d die with a smile on my face. This decision is probably one of my biggest in life, it has had an enormous impact on my life. Obviously as I even still remember it.
Because I have chosen to believe that happiness is a choice I often choose to be happy. Yes, life has it’s challenges and that’s one good key, to see problems as challenges is one great way to shift the way we perceive our world/life. IMO it is more likely we do something about “it” if we see it as an challenge rather than a problem, this of course is only based on my own experience.
Wow, this was “a little” long but what the hey, it was fun to write 🙂 Thank you if you read the whole thing and if not I thank you for reading just this.
Thank you everybody for being the wonderful unique persons you are! Thank you for seeing the world in a way only you can! Every perspective is infinetly valuable to this world.
Thank you for the opportunity to plant this seed here, I believe this is a great place for this seed to grow into a beautiful flower. Let us water each others seeds of small joys and observe what beautiful flowers they all become when we take care of them together.
I’ll end this comment with this little insight, what I have has nothing to do with how rich I feel.
Woops, I have to make an little correction. What I meant to say last was more like this: How rich I feel has little to do with how much I have.
Well, it’s okay to make a fool of oneself, especially if one gets a good laugh afterwards 🙂
Fortunately I can blame this on me being from Finland 😀
Blessings!
Ok… my first comment was supposed to be in reply to Michelle up there, but it didn’t seem to work. Oh well…
I am a frequent viewer and commenter of the 1000awesomethings blog. I love it! I buy the books and the calender. Neil also is the one who inspired my blog of smiles. I frequently talk about the awesome blog on my personal blog.
Oh don’t worry about her. We don’t believe her over here anyway. If you found $5 stuffed in a book on a book shelf, I don’t care who you are, you would never go to the cashier and give it to them. What are they going to do? Announce it over the loudspeaker? Whoever lost $5 please come to the front. It seems like somebody is mistaking moral superiority and guilt for honesty. No need to be guilty. People lose money, and people find money. I’m a very honest and honorable person, but something just didn’t sound right about what she was saying. That’s just me though. I leave $5 somewhere every day so maybe something is wrong with me! Lol
Hi there!
A thousand… no, a million thanks to you friend!!
I am a huge fan of joy and life in general, while reading your blog my heart expanded and great joy filled every single cell of my body 🙂 I myself write a blog (in Finnish) and do my best to express the beauty and awesomeness of life… okay I admit, mainly I write because it is so much fun to share life 😀
I will definitely come back here to read. Always wonderful to find people who also experience “this side” of life. Had to purchase my own copy of “The book of awesome”, thank you for this opportunity to find it.
Heh, I found this fantastic place while reading comments on Tony Robbins website, go figure. I must say this was an awesome surprise, I love it when life comes with these surprises and strangely they seem to happen more and more 🙂
Thank you for what you do, I hope you don’t mind if I copy you a little. Already checked if I have some smaller bills in my wallet.
A huge warm hugg or a strong manly handshake, whichever you prefer.
Greetings from Finland!
PS. Sorry if this was a little hyper, can’t help it… or maybe I could but life is too good not to live it fully.
This might be the best comment I’ve ever gotten on here. No offense to the other people, but I think anybody would agree your zest for life is palpable. It comes right through the computer screen. Hyper or not, keep doing what you’re doing. It seems to be working. And if you do happen to plant a little seed of money joy, please take a picture and send it to me at ifoundmoneytoday@gmail.com. I’ll make sure it gets up on the site. You just got me so pumped up!
Will do and thank you 🙂
One more thing. After reading your blog I allowed myself more freedom to express what I feel within on my own blog and it has felt great! As I previously expressed I am very grateful to find others who express themselves in a similar way to that which feels natural to me.
I must admit that I have limited myself quite a bit because I have been afraid to be judged by others as “too hyper” or something similar. This is something I have created for myself and I am grateful I have found the courage to change it. In the beginning of this year I made a decision to express my true feelings more honestly, bumping into your blog was like an answer to that 🙂
Like life was saying “it’s okay to express yourself in a way that feels natural to you, it’s okay to be who you truly are”, wow, there’s a whole lot of emotion behind that… aaaaaand moving on.
I can be quite shy, I actually think this is the first time I have commented on a blog 😀 Well, the first step is often that which feels the hardest but for each step after the first it becomes easier. Hmm, wonder if this is why I now chose to write so darn much here, to get the engines going. This was supposed to be a short comment, well, I have always had a little difficult time keeping it short 🙂 Maybe I just need to appreciate that part of me, after all I appreciate the unique details of everyone else. Maybe now’s a good time to apply that to myself as well, food for thought.
Anyways, just wanted to share a super positive effect of your great blog. You see, I was previously thinking about how one positive action can start a chain reaction which results in a potentially infinite amount of positive actions.
… and the short version: thank you! 😀