Occasionally I like to pause and think about the goodies that make my daily life and work feel richer, easier, and all around better. I often do this when I’m caught in a tidepool of glittering possibilities (like right now) and am trying to step firmly toward the soft shores of clarity.

Here are the 6 best things I’ve discovered/done/read in 2014, so far.

(No affiliate links; just sharing because I love.)

DDP Yoga

DDP Yoga’s Voice Values, most likely: Power, Audacity, Helpfulness, Community

Being the purist and the aesthete that I am, I never imagined myself taking a former WWF wrestler as my yoga teacher. (I know.) I saw Diamond Dallas Page (DDP) pitch his yoga-at-home DVD program on Shark Tank, and was almost immediately sold. As someone who has been alternately very physically active for years at a time and then pretty sedentary, due to pesky overuse injuries and lifestyle (the writing habit is a pretty sedentary one if left unchecked), I had a feeling DDP’s approach to yoga-as-physical rehab could work for me.

I deal with chronic inflammation in my tissues and ligaments. I trained up to 30 hours a week as a pre-professional classical ballet dancer through my adolescent and teen years. I’ve always been hyperflexible with hyperextended joints (i.e. when I straighten my elbows or knees, they go past straight). Ballet’s emphasis on being super stretchy and elongated had already jacked me, followed by years of heavy lifting at the gym on overstretched ligaments (I used both machines and with free weights, all with great form, but still), followed by overzealous stretching during yoga practice. All this plus a decidedly high inflammatory diet — one of my unprettiest admissions, but true: when I’m not eating clean, I’m eating cheese, butter, white flour, and burgers and fries — makes for a very inflamed body.

DDP’s approach couples basic yoga poses with basic physical therapy. Plus he uses dynamic resistance (i.e. intentional body weight resistance) to help “jack up” your heart rate for greater fat burn. It feels good and it works. Plus, it’s guy-friendly and safe for those who have no interest in traditional yoga’s spiritual component.

While I’m still zenning out my tissues with rest, ice, gentle massage, and ibuprofen (and moving toward eating clean more consistently), I’m also gaining rapidly in strength, core fitness, and postural alignment. I feel back in my body, and that makes everything better.

Tara Brach’s podcast

Tara Brach’s Voice Values, most likely: Intimacy, Depth, Legacy

I was never attracted to Buddhism because of what I perceived as its ascetic austerity and denial of the self. But ever since TWO people who know me well recommended her podcast to me, it’s become my daily (and often nightly) listen. Brach is a clinical psychologist and a leading western teacher of mindfulness meditation. Her gentle, embodied, humorous, intelligent guidance on being “right here” (I can hear her saying the phrase as I type it) and accepting exactly what is has really helped defuse my nervous system and make me a more present business person, partner, friend, and person.

Body Oil from Etta + Billie

Etta + Billie’s Voice Values, most likely: Transparency, Clarity, Excellence

I’d been in search of a smartly packaged, organic, just-right-smelling body oil line to forever replace lotion, and this one is it. Etta + Billie is handcrafted in San Francisco by Alana Rivera. I always flip my wig over modern vintage design, so the packaging of this line turned my head. I’ve been alternating Lavender one day with Grapefruit and Cardamom the next. Slicking this oil on after a bath or shower makes me smell delicious and feel rapturously anointed.

THE GOLDFINCH by Donna Tartt

Tartt’s Voice Values, most likely: Legacy, Enthusiasm, Depth

This is the 2014 Pulitzer Price winner and rightfully so. Ten pages in, I knew I’d be giving it 5 stars on GoodReads. Terrorism, adolescent drug and alchohol use, awareness of class issues, New York City legend and lore, and the fine art and antiques world. It’s all here. A chunk of a read at 800+ pages, this book’s epic scope makes it the twin to Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, but set in contemporary times.

I’ve especially loved reading up on the notoriously private Tartt herself, to whom my own fiction was compared by Lee K. Abbott, then director of the MFA program way back at Ohio State when I was an undergrad (!!!).

Deleting my color-blocked “What I Should Ideally Be Doing At This Time of Day, 5 Days a Week” schedule from Google Calendar

Google’s Voice Values, most likely: Innovation, Playfulness, Community

I finally did it. No more time tyranny by pixels. I like the idea of being a structured-to-the-quarter-hour person who lives happily by her calendar, but I’m just not. I need to flow like a stream, buffered by several well-placed rocks. Segmenting my Monday-Friday into color-coded blocks of time prescribed for “yoga, coffee, shower” or “prolific time: write!” just hasn’t been working for me for a good while, and I finally decided to stop pretending it someday might.

Not changing my brand’s color palette on a whim

My Voice Values (for sure): Power, Excellence, Depth, Clarity, Intimacy

Some months back, I’d emailed Allie and told her, “I need to shift something up, visually. Can we try recreating a similar vibe with this new color palette I found?” I sent her a secret digital passel of images showing the new palette, and we tried it on for size, but it just didn’t sing. And I kept comparing all the mockups to what was on my site already, and missing the signature pop of saffron yellow we have going on.

So instead of mixing up the palette, we tweaked the Home page in subtle ways, and I’m adjusting the intimacy level of the whole brand conversation. On some level, I like formal; I like official; I like ‘comfortable prestige’ — it’s me, it’s my personality. Someone close to me once described me as “an 80 year-old grandma, a 19 year-old rapper, and a 40 year-old Victorian lady all in one package.”

Yep. That feels about right. My natural tendency is to maintain a polite, polished reserve until I can see you eye to eye, one-to-one, and then I’ll use my inside voice — that is, inside closed doors. Like Donna Tartt, I’m pretty private.

But this year, I’m cracking the door just a bit wider open. For one, with posts like these.

In the comments, I’d love to know:

What’s one of your best non-business finds of 2014 so far? And, if you care to share, what are your top Voice Values?