The following guest post was written by Lauren Lankford, blogger, photographer, artist, decorator, designer, writer, fashion enthusiast, & tea drinker. Lauren is a daily mission to make my life beautiful & speak the truth in love.

Hey guys! Lauren here, the Team Leader for Love Bomb!

Elysa is digging the Love Bomb project and I wanted to get you all on board! What is Love Bomb? The concept is simple. Once a week, as a worldwide community, we concentrate our love and drop a “love bomb” on a blogger who is going through hell. We change the lives of those desperately needing hope, love, care & encouragement – together, once a week, for five minutes.

We are all busy, I know this. But the next time someone asks you what you’re doing with your life, I bet your answer isn’t “cleaning up,” “going grocery shopping” or “sitting at a desk.” I know that all of you want something More.

A homeless man asked me a couple days ago what my life objective was, and without hesitation I replied, “to love people.” It’s taken me a long time to get here. To the place where that is my default answer, where it comes naturally. Yes I want to get married, yes I want to live where I want to live, there are activities and careers that I dream about. But what do I want to do with my life? Love people.

And it’s a genuine fight to fit what you’re doing with your life into your daily routine.

This is why I’m pouring a good chunk of every day into Love Bomb, and why I am the new Team Leader for the project. I want to help you fit what you truly care about into your daily or weekly routine. So please, put your name and email into the little box below, and every week when you get the email linking you to someone who desperately needs to be reminded that that love is real, take 5 minutes to do something about it. I want to see all of you grow into the place where you are content to simply respond, “I want to love people” when you are asked what you’re doing with your life.

Come on guys, you are bloggers. This is what we do. We comment to show our love.

website | @dropalovebomb

Follow us on Tumblr, on Twitter and subscribe below to the once-a-week mission emails.

And welcome to the Love Bomb Team.

- lauren xoxo
@laurenlankford

I heart books. One monthish (I make up words) ago I saw a tweet that Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, was coming out with a new book. I had the pleasure of hearing Tony speak in Vegas this past February. Let’s just say if I didn’t a) love living in Texas b) like my current job, I may have felt very compelled to up-and-move to Vegas so I could work for Zappos. Seriously, that’s how inspired I was by what Tony had to say about Zappos and the company culture. So naturally, when I heard this new book coming out about Zappos I knew I must have it! Believe it or not (I’m still jumping up and down) I got an advanced copy to review for this very here blog.

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose“>Being that I love books and I love blogging you’d think that I’d love blogging about books, but ya know what, I pretty much suck am not great at the book blogging. As a blogger every time I read an article, book, magazine, newspaper (ehh not really) I immediately want to blog about it. The problem with books, especially one as fabulouso as Delivering Happiness, is that about ever 4 pages I want to put the book down and copy verbatim the words from the book to share with my blogging friends. You may have guessed I’m not going to do this. But I have had quite the debate about what to share with you about this lovely book. Do I share the story about the people who ordered pizza from the Zappos’ rep, or when Timmy needed a big man watch, or perhaps something more serious like the impact of random acts of WOWness? Well, I have good news and bad… the good news you can read all of these little tidbits (and much more) in the book starting TODAY! The other good news is I have one book to GIVEAWAY! The bad news is, if you don’t buy (or win) the book you will never know how Jonathan helped Timmy with his very important watch search. Betcha didn’t know Zappos sold watches.

Have you stopped reading, because your brain is full of MUST WIN THE BOOK chatter? I’ll try not to be too offended. Here’s how you enter:

One of the big topics of this book is how Zappos came to have The Culture Book. A question was asked to employees of Zappos about the company culture. The (unedited) answers to this question were published in a book that became part of the training regimen at Zappos. So, I thought it would be fun for you to answer this question about your job (self employed, corporate, startup, wherever you make money) as your entry to win your very own copy of the book. You can leave your response in the comments below, write a blog post and link here, or tweet your answer and send a link to the tweet, or I suppose if you want to be anonymous you can send me an email.

Here’s the question: If you had to describe your company’s culture in two or three paragraphs, what would you say? If you asked your coworkers to do the same, how similar (or different) do you think their answers would be?

Quotable from Delivering Happiness:

• “Looking over the crowd, I realized that every person took a different path to get here, but our paths somehow all managed to intersect with one another in the here and now.”
• “I’d won the game of what I was told college was supposed to be all about: getting a job that paid as much money as possible”
• “I wasn’t mentally prepared for this scenario. I’d been thinking about what value meal I was going to order from Taco Bell.”
• “Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you.”

I have a special connection with the music world. I’m not sure if my iPod is psychic or if there’s a DJ fairy that lives in my apartment. But, I am convinced there must be a not-so-logical explanation for why it is that any time I find myself in a mood that I can’t put words on, that all I have to do is hit “Shuffle” on my 2003 iPod and the words I was searching for fill up my room.

Tonight those words came in the form of Sara Evans, I Keep Looking.

***
Just as soon as I get what I want
I get unsatisfied
Good is good but could be better

I keep looking, I keep looking for
I keep looking for something more
I always wonder what’s on the other side
Of the number two door
I keep looking
Looking for something more

Well, the straight haired girls
They all want curls
And the brunettes wanna be blonde
It’s your typical thing
You got ying you want yang
It just goes on and on
They say, hey, it’s only human
To never be satisfied
Well I guess that I’m as human as the next one
***

I wonder if it’s a generational thing? Are we a generation of “always wanting to know what’s next”? Or is it a gender thing? Maybe females are the dreamers who need to reach for the next star? Or… maybe it’s a personality trait that a select few have? Which ever it is… this song spoke to the words in my heart.

At this moment in time I love what I have with my family, and lifelong and newfound friends, my better-than-I-could-imagine relationship, job that challenges me everyday and the moments in between.

I also changed my hair from blonde to strawberry blonde, am looking to move AGAIN, need a new computer, plan to redesign this blog, am tired bored with the movies I’ve seen lately and should get back to the gym in this decade.

But “good is good but could be better.”

I don’t know exactly what that “better” is yet. Whatever it is I’m ready.

ps: I wrote this post from my iPhone in bed because I can’t sleep. Yet another trait of the “unsatisfied”.

photo by: orangeacid

Do you have any of your own secrets to add? What makes you truly happy?

I know this sounds a bit silly, but I really love the Facebook Flair app. Mine is filled with fun quotes and pictures. So here’s the knowledge that my facebook flair has to offer to you:

• no regrets, just lessons learned
• seriously?!
• Have a Nice Day
• if you believe in it, then stand for it
• Good friends don’t let you do stupid things … alone
• Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. – Picasso
• Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass … it’s about learning to dance in the rain
• An Apple a day keeps windows away
• What makes you different makes you beautiful
• To draw you must close your eyes and sing. – Picasso
• Everything will be okay in the end. If It’s not okay, it’s not the end.
• Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted. – John Lennon
• I believe in music like some people belive in fairy tales
• Artists are sexy
• Hug Harder. Laugh Louder. Smile Bigger. Love Longer.
• Life isn’t about finding youself. Life is about creating yourself.
• Believe
• We’re adults. When did that happen? And how do we make it stop?
• laughter (n): when a smile has an orgasm

This is what my flair can tell you about me:

• I’m adorkable
• I’m a brown eyed girl
• I love sushi
• My alarm clock and I are NOT friends.
• I shower naked.
• I’m blogging this.

I’ve debated whether or not to have GenPink be geared specifically to women or keep it more neutral with the occasionally pinkness. Since this has been an ongoing debate I’m always interested to find sites that are geared specifically to women (or so they say). This mornings I found SheZoom – A new online community focused on woman-friendly, compelling and real-world information. Essentially SheZoom is a video sharing YouTubeish site geared towards women that launched in March of 2008.

I thought I’d share a video that proposed some interesting questions about who is happier – men or women and single or married people. Watch the video and then let us know what you think.

One common trait among those of us in our twenties is we are trying to juggle/balance/cram in too many things into each and every day/week/month. Between work, family, friends, taking care of the house and life in general, are you remembering to take time for yourself? I know that I have to make a conscious effort to take time to relax and recharge a bit. I am not really much of a TV watcher but I do love to take time to sit on my couch and veg out and catch up on some Oprah. Oh how I love Oprah. For those of you who are bookworms and spend your down time reading I found a great resource for ya – 100 Notable Books of 2007.

Some ways I spend my "me time": watching Oprah or Grey’s Anatomy, playing my favorite music on repeat and singing at the top of my lungs, sitting outside and just enjoying life, playing with photoshop, doodling, I used to paint (I think I’m going to start again), long baths, sleeping the day away on the occasional Saturday I don’t have to be somewhere, and once in a blue moon there is reading. What do you do in your "me time"?

Photo Credit: jurvetson

According to Gretchen of The Happiness Project there are 8 reasons that money can buy happiness.

If you have never checked out The Happiness Project I highly recommend it. She provides daily tips, theories and ideas about the art of being happy.

To give you a place to start, here are some of the top posts according to aideRSS.

• How to feel happier BY THE END OF THE DAY: Your menu of options.
• Nine extremely simple and easy tips to take stress out of your day.
• Seven tips for having an original thought or finding a solution.
• What I learned about happiness from my love of Harry Potter

I have enjoyed following along with The Happiness Project, I love her writing style and I have enjoyed having all of these great resources in one place.

*Gretchen has been added to the W List.