A couple of days ago, while taking a break from my work, I watched the ending part of the movie “Serendipity,” which I haven’t seen in awhile. Here’s the song “When You Know” by Shawn Colvin with clips of the movie in the video.
Tag Archives: positivity
When you know.
Filed under Happiness, Inspiration, Life, Love, Love Story, Movie, Music, Romance, Uncategorized
Inspiring advice from female entrepreneurs.
Inspiring advice from female entrepreneurs.
Filed under Business, Career, Entrepreneur, Happiness, Life, Positive Living, Positivity, Uncategorized
Love Songs to Inspire
After 32 days of non-stop work on a development project in Kona, Hawaii and an EB-5 Regional Center based in Hawaii, I’m typing my 15th draft of my first novel that I started in October 2006 that currently consists of nearly 80,000 words, a love story between a young male protagonist and a dead girl that brings forward our fears of being alone, not finding true love in our lifetime, losing the battle against negative people, and dying without resolving the pain resulting from heartbreak and broken families. This weekend, I’m also going to continue working on my novel based in Iraq during the U.S. occupation – a love story that is sure to draw controversy because it is surrounded by violence, something you may either understand or disagree with, depending on where you stand on certain political issues. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that love can guide us through anger, death, and our darkest moments. I began writing my second story in May 2013 and it has just under 44,973 words.
The song “Unconditionally” by Katy Perry describes the emotional depth that the characters in my novels have with with each other despite their flaws and all the craziness around them. Even if the world is burning around them and their fate seems doomed, you yearn for their love to succeed. This music video has a ballroom scene. Likewise, my first story has a climax chapter with a ballroom scene. Such a powerful song.
Today, I just listened to the song below “Graduate” by Handsome Ghost and I immediately liked it. The song connects to my stories because the characters in my novels have enormous obstacles that’s preventing them from being together.
“Swept Away” by Christoper Cross is one of my all-time favorite love songs ever, so much so that I wrote it into my first novel. Every time I listen to it, it brings out this warm feeling in my chest, and when I’m alone or writing a love story, it bring so much emotions out of me.
“Seeing for the First Time” by Britt Nicole is another song that represents the love that the characters in my novels have for one another.
I hope you enjoyed this entry and the songs! Take care and may happiness be with you always.
With Warmest Aloha,
Jon Riki Karamatsu
Filed under Books, Business, Career, Fiction, Happiness, Life, Love, Love Story, Mental Health, Music, Novels, Peace, Philosophy, Positive Living, Positivity, Psychiatry, Psychology, Romance, Uncategorized
If they judge you by extraordinary standards, then live super extraordinary lives.
With innovation, hard work, relationship-building, and a relentless pursuit of success, comes a higher level of jealousy, envy, and scrutiny. It doesn’t matter how good our intentions are. We are often told that we knew what we were getting into. The message is clear: If we wanted to avoid such negativity, we should’ve settled with an average life. But that message goes against everything that our parents and teachers taught us – that we can go as far as we want to go.
I believe that we should continue to pursue our dreams and develop friendships that last a lifetime. We must keep working hard to create products and services through our ideas. If others want to judge us by extraordinary standards, then we just have to live super extraordinary lives.
Though I’m no longer serving in the public sector, I will do my best to help Hawaii and America’s economy through the companies that I’m a partner of. In the spirit of the music events business that I’m involved with, here is an uplifting song “We Don’t Stop” by Kaskade that encourages us to keep doing the best we can in our pursuit of happiness.
Filed under Business, Career, Happiness, Life, Love, Mental Health, Music, Peace, Philosophy, Positive Living, Positivity, Psychiatry, Psychology, Uncategorized
Into the Light of Happiness.
At times, our greatest enemy is ourselves. Our negative thoughts push aside our positive ones, which in turn, affects our actions and everything around us. We get hard on ourselves for our failures when there was so much that we gained from taking that journey. We dwell on the past and what we don’t have, when the future is so bright with endless possibilities. We mourn the dead even though they never did leave us. Meanwhile, there are so many people who love us, and many more who are cheering us on to make our next move. So why stay still and let the darkness consume us? We have to make our move, and then another, and then many, many more. The future is relying on what we do now. To maximize what’s ahead of us, we need to be alive in the here and now. By practicing gratitude and compassion, we can transcend past our fears and into the light of happiness.
Below is a song called “Spirits” by the Strumbellas that reflect my feelings in my journal entry above.
Filed under Business, Career, Happiness, Life, Love, Mental Health, Music, Peace, Philosophy, Positive Living, Positivity, Psychiatry, Psychology, Uncategorized
Positive Living Practice #1: Reducing Stress in a Positive Way
As I mentioned in my “Positive Living Practice and Stages Practice” post, I’m creating a Positive Living Practice series that highlights products and services that can help us with our health, wealth, and happiness so that we can live a happy and fulfilling life. By “health,” I mean good physical, mental, and spiritual health. For “wealth,” I define it as time, knowledge, and ideas. And “happiness” is the wonderful joy we get from gratitude, compassion, and love.
Today, I’m discussing a challenge that we all face within our lives – “Stress.” Have you ever received another person’s wrath because of that person’s weakness in not being able to handle his or her stress? Or worse, have you ever directed your anger at another person and blamed your bad behavior because of the stress your were going through?
How often we experience stress is within our control. I personally believe that 99% of all challenges we face are either minor or can be resolved. In regards to the 1% of challenges that we can’t control, we can become stronger by accepting it, learning from it, and moving on.
Studies have shown that stress can cause us emotional and physical problems. Further, if we manage it in the wrong way, we could hurt our relationships and reputation. Instead of handling stress in a destructive way that hurts ourselves and others, we can address it in a positive way that spreads waves of positive energy to others. In this post, I will share with you my strategies to reduce stress. I also include a poster on how to beat stress and boost happiness by Happify, a company that helps you to develop happiness skills through its online activities and articles. You can check out Happify at http://www.happify.com.
If we can reduce stress, we will be healthier physically, mentally, and spiritually; and be stronger in our practice of gratitude, compassion, and love. With good health and happiness, we can make the best use of our time, absorb more knowledge, and come up with more ideas.
The following are some of the things that I like to do to reduce stress:
- Exercise: Run indoors or outdoors and lift weights.
- Dream of what I want to achieve.
- Type my ideas.
- Write down and update my goals.
- Envision the outcome of my goals.
- Listen to music.
- Spend time with my family.
- Be around positive people.
- Have gratitude for all the good things I have in my life.
- Meditate.
- Self-Reflect.
- See the positive in every failure.
- Try to get a good sleep and take a nap when I need a boost.
- Listen to podcast shows that highlight positive and successful people.
- Write fictional stories.
- Read novels.
- Learn through reading or practice.
- Watch a television show or movie that inspires me.
- Sensory Therapy – Sight: Vision boards, posters, & light from candles.
- Sensory Therapy – Sound: Music and sounds of nature.
- Sensory Therapy – Aroma: Scented candles and oil diffusers.
- Sensory Therapy – Touch: Shower or bath, swimming in the ocean or a pool, or a massage.
- Network.
- Enjoy events.
- Appreciate the beauty of nature.
Here is a poster from Happify that shows us how to take on stress in a positive way.
#happy #stress #stressrelief #stressreduction #mindfulness #gratitude #empathy #compassion #mentalhealth #health #positivity #positiveliving #happiness #joy
Filed under Compassion, Empathy, Gratitude, Life, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Positive Living, Positivity, Quotes, Writing
Productivity Poster
An interesting productivity poster. I’m trying to better my sleeping, jumpstart my day from the morning, and improve my time management.
Filed under Positivity
I’ve shot a hole through everything I’ve loved.
Put on your best headsets. This is “Shots” by Imagine Dragons. Girls have gone in and out of my life, and as for my career, well I’ve had my ups and downs. We go through challenges but keep striving as hard as we can for the world that we’ve imagined until our time is up.
Filed under Career, Life, Love, Music, Positivity
JON RIKI KARAMATSU 