Durell...Full-Time Conversationalist
Monday, December 31, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Black Life Coaches: How to Shake the Midday Blues
(1) To have a better afternoon, start the night before: What most of us fail to understand is the importance of a decent night’s rest. Science has proven the brain/body combination is in desperate need of recharging daily to operate at a peak level. If you forsake that, you are running an eight cylinder on two or three cylinders. Go to bed tonight!
(2) What you put in your body in the morning will visit you this afternoon: It is so tempting to grab a doughnut, cookie or other snack as we dash to work. In fact, society has made it harder to eat any healthy alternatives. But that is no excuse especially considering all the diseases that are directly linked to our eating habits. Try something ‘alive’ in the am; fruit coupled with your usual eggs and going light on the meat products. These will make digestion easier by the middle of the day.
(3) Get up and get moving: This is one of my favorites. There is nothing like a brisk walk around the block right when you feel the sleepiest. The blood circulation will get moving and your heart will start pumping fresh oxygen to the brain. The next thing you know you’re bright eyed and ready to finish the end of your day strong.
(4) Get your laugh on: I read an article a few weeks ago in a magazine detailing how important laughter is to our daily survival. You’d be surprised to hear how many people go days and even weeks without a single chuckle. Laugh involves several key muscles and releases powerful endorphins throughout your system that feed cells and make you feel better. Laughter is really great medicine for the mid day blues.
I’m sure you may have a few more tips of your own that get you through the day. Add these to your arsenal and just watch your productivity soar. We can beat those blues with a little preparation so have fun with it.
See you at the top!
Cherese
About the Writer
Cherese L. Jackson is the co-founder of New Direction Coaching Associates. (BlackLifeCoaches.net)
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Five Brilliant Brothers You Should Know By Now (BlackAmericaWeb.com)
Hopefully, you’re already familiar with some of these names; if not, we encourage you to check out their work and enjoy their intellectual capacity. This is a group of men not celebrated for their hoop skills or their rhyme prowess, but for their very, very sexy minds. We salute and celebrate these men of letters.
There's more where they came from, we know. But let's take a minute to give these five bright brothers their just due. By the way President Obama is excluded from this list, only because we already know that man is brilliant - after all, he’s our Commander-in-Chief.
Michael Eric Dyson
Dyson, 53, a Princeton graduate, is a speaker, thinker, professor, author, cultural critic and more. And sorry, ladies, he's also married - to the equally brilliant Marcia Dyson. Well, we said he was smart, didn’t we?
Follow him on Twitter @MichaelEDyson.
Recommended Reading: "Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip-Hop."
Derrick Ashong
Ghanaian-American Derrick Ashong, 36, rose to national prominence the new-fashioned way – via a video that went viral on YouTube. In 2008, when a reporter asked a casually-dressed young black man on the street outside of a Democratic presidential debate in Los Angeles what he thought of then-Sen. Obama's campaign for he White House, he probably didn't expect an articulate, point-by-point analysis. Well, that's what he got - to his visible surprise. (Since removed from YouTube, you can see a clip of it here at 2:26.) The Harvard graduate became a symbol of the youth movement that helped Obama get elected.
Since that moment, Ashong, who is also a musician, has become a radio host, hosting "The Derrick Ashong Experience" on Oprah Winfrey's Sirius XM Radio channel and a TV host on "The Stream" for Al Jazeera English. After returning to Harvard for doctoral studies, Ashong left to focus on his music, his public speaking and media career and his other projects.
Follow him on Twitter @ashong. Click here for his follow up to that original video, and click here to read his blog.
Dr. William Jelani Cobb
Dr. William Jelani Cobb has been on the academic scene for years, although his face may not be as well-known to those outside of Spelman College and academic circles. The longtime Spelman professor of history is now at Rutgers University, his graduate alma mater, as an associate professor of history and Africana studies. It's a lengthy title, but one this 35-year-old Queens native deserves.
He just recently appeared on Melissa Harris Perry's eponymous new weekend morning show on MSNBC, and we’re hoping to see a lot more of him on TV as the Obama campaign heads down to November.
Follow him on Twitter @jelani9. Click here to watch him on "Melissa Harris Perry."
Recommended Reading: "The Devil and Dave Chappelle."