Team Jacob [Gann]

I am Team Jacob... Jacob Gann. 

This boy beats Jacob or Edward hands down. 

Do yourself a favor and listen to his music. It is magic. He is one of the most talented musicians I've ever had the pleasure of listening and talking to. Not only does he write his own lyrics and sings, but he also plays every instrument you hear in his songs. It's only a matter of time before he gets big and is playing sold out shows all over the world. He is that amazing.

You know that moment when you listen to a song and it just overwhelms you in every single way possible... that moment when you find music you have to listen to on repeat for days, weeks, months, forever on end and have it engraved in your mind, ears, and heart but still can't get enough of it? That moment when you find a song that puts your feelings in words in a way you never thought possible? 

Lovelies, meet Jacob Gann. In his own words:

"You are somebody before people know about you, after they know about you, and when they forget about you. You are always somebody" Jacob Gann (born March 28, 1992) is a singer/songwriter from Tulsa, Oklahoma now based in Nashville, Tennessee. His style has influences from Augustana, Coldplay, Death Cab For Cutie, Damien Rice, Andrew Belle, and Greg Laswell. Buy his debut acoustic EP here :http://tinyurl.com/jacobgann

Some of Jacob's lyrics that are my favorite include:

"If you're tired of this endless game of masquerades, you're not the only one."

"Because in the end when the sun sets and all the stars fade, whose heart have you kept to be the light of your shade?"

"I don't know why I am the way I am, but I swear if you'd just try I'd never say goodbye."

"Peace of mind is found in the past. For no reason or rhyme we grew up way too fast."

"We imagine love to be so much more than anyone can ever be. When all that I wanted was for you to want to be next to me."

"L.O.V.E. is Letting One View Everything inspite of (F.E.A.R.) Feelings Emphasized Around Regrets.". 

"There's nothing to lose, when you're living in yesterday."

Jacob inspires me with his creativity. He is such a sweetheart. If you could fall in love with a person through their words, I would be head over heels. He keeps in touch with his fans via Facebook and Twitter. I asked him what inspires his stunning music. He said, "The inspiration behind my music is from personal experience as well as the world's different perspectives of what love is." 

Visit Jacob's Website

His voice is the soundtrack to my summer. I wish I had an extensive vocabulary to even begin to attempt to put in words how incredible Jacob and his music are... my words could never do him justice. Finding him was one of the best things to happen to me this summer. He is that good. Go see for yourself and you'll soon become Team Jacob Gann!

SOMEDAY

Dearest Lovelies,

     My sincerest apologizes for my lack of inspiration (or anything for that matter)… I appreciate your patience more than you know! Busy is an understatement for my week. I started a new job this week. I love it. It’s so great to love your job. It makes you more productive and improves all aspects of your life (true story, there are studies that back this up). I am blessed beyond comprehension. I love life. I love you all dearly. I promise more posts! Other than work this week, good news! I am becoming an early riser. I have to be to work at 8 in the morning—which is early for me. It’s good though because it’s making me tired at night. I fell asleep at 9 last night!!! If you know me, you’re mouth will have fell reading that previous sentence. Yes this is coming from the night owl who never used to fall asleep before midnight!

     I had an incredible day today! I got my nails done, went to lunch, and went shopping with my sweet mother and sissy McHale. I got Delirium by Lauren Oliver and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins to read! I am excited to start them! I adore reading. I think more people should read. I got a letter from Sid today. Sid is a sweetheart. It’s been incredible to reconnect with an old friend. I cannot wait to reconnect in person when he gets home in January! Tonight I went to dinner with my old roommates and some of my best friends—the lovely Rian Elizabeth & Hannah Jane—for Hannah’s 21^st birthday (which was yesterday). Best time ever! It was awesome to have a reunion with them. We will be roomies again starting in the middle of August for 2011-2012! I hope you all had a wonderful week & that next week is just as great to you. I will leave you with my love and a few quotes to get you by till my next post! Don’t forget to keep e-mailing or commenting with your questions for my Q&A post coming in August! You can ask me anything about me, Inspiration Nation, etc.

     With Love,

     Charley Brooke

P.S. You can find me on Twitter in two places! www.twitter.com/TheUSAPrincess is my personal Twitter account. www.twitter.com/mcquotenation is Inspiration Nation’s account ran by me and other members of the Nation :)

“Take a chance. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Ask the most attractive guy (girl) in the room to dance. Say what you want. Demand what you’re entitled to. There’s a pretty decent chance that you won’t get it, but who will you be if you never even try?”

“You know what is the difference between promises and memories? We break promises, where as memories break us.”

“There are certain things in life that are better off unknown, things you wish you never asked, never saw, never heard, never even felt.”

“Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.”

-Elizabeth Gilbert

“We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can’t have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we’re so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they’re not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want…Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it’ll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you’re living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.”

-Nick Hornby

“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without conditions and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

-Stephen Colbert

“I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it’s all small pieces of paper and someone’s turned on the fan. But talking to you makes me feel like the fan’s been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.”

“It is in all of us to defy expectations, to go into the world and to be brave and to want, to need, to hunger for adventures, to embrace change and chance and risk so that we may breathe and know what it is to be free.”

“She had to stop protecting herself from herself, from that little girl inside still looking for a happy ending.”

-Marilyn Griffith

“If you never try, then you’ll never know.”

-Coldplay

“Do you remember

The first time we shared a smile?

I’ll never forget.”

“Drive away with me?

Let’s head west with windows down

And catch the sunset.”

“Girls, it’s okay to cry. Just don’t forget that God has prepared you for the right one since the day you were born.”

“Even if happiness forgets you for a bit, never completely forget about it.”

-Jacques Prevert

“Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world… no one ever had it before. Perhaps no one ever will again.”

-The Curator

“Rudeness is the weak person’s imitation of strength.”

“Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you.”

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”

-Lou Holtz

“And if it kills me

I can swear it to you now

I will set you free.”

-Tyler Knott Gregson, Daily Haiku on Love

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”

-Albus Dumbledore

“Let’s get out of my head and become real. Let’s be non-fiction. Fiction always has a last page and I want to touch forever with you.”

“There it was. The quiet reassurance, giving me strength. Love is patient, you whispered in ink, love is patient.”

“What I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all of my heart, I love you.”

-V for Vendetta

“If you ask most people what they’ve always wanted to do, most people haven’t done it. That breaks my heart.”

-Angelina Jolie

“Insecurity is an ugly thing. It makes you hate people you don’t even know.”

“You were given this life because you are strong enough to live it.”

“It’s amazing what people do for love, and it’s even more amazing what love does for people.”

“They say people come and go. But the truth is, no one really disappears from your life. People never really leave, their roles just change.”

“It is with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“The world is tough, but we are made to survive.”

“My favorite eye color is the one you can gaze into and get lost until time might as well have stopped and nothing else matters.”

-Sid (my amazing friend)

“All of the best love stories have one thing in common; you have to go against the odds to get there.”

“Stars are the prettiest things in the world.”

-Rachel McAdams

“We keep running after the people who least care about us. Why don’t we just stop, and see the ones running behind us?”

Choose Happiness :)

Our Search for Happiness

I have concluded that since we don’t always desire that which is good, having all our desires granted to us would not bring us happiness. In fact, instant and unrestrained gratification of all our desires would be the shortest and most direct route to unhappiness. The many hours I have spent listening to the tribulations of men and women have persuaded me that both happiness and unhappiness are much of our own making.

 Happiness is not given to us in a package that we can just open up and consume. Nobody is ever happy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rather than thinking in terms of a day, we perhaps need to snatch happiness in little pieces, learning to recognize the elements of happiness and then treasuring them while they last.

Pleasure is often confused with happiness but is by no means synonymous with it. The poet Robert Burns (1759–96) wrote an excellent definition of pleasure in these lines:

But pleasures are like poppies spread:

You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river,

A moment white—then melts for ever;

Or like the borealis race,

That flit ere you can point their place;

Or like the rainbow’s lovely form

Evanishing amid the storm.

(“Tam o’ Shanter,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns [1897], 91, lines 59–66)

Pleasure, unlike happiness, is that which pleases us or gives us gratification. Usually it endures for only a short time. As David O. McKay once said: “You may get that transitory pleasure, yes, but you cannot find joy, you cannot find happiness. Happiness is found only along that well beaten track, narrow as it is, though straight, which leads to life eternal”

Obviously there is a great difference between feeling happy at a given moment and being happy for a lifetime, between having a good time and leading a good life. Most Americans claim the pursuit of happiness among their inalienable rights, as set forth by their Founding Fathers. This concept was not introduced by them, however, as early philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Locke, Aquinas, and Mill opined that happinessis the most fundamental of all human searches.

In Tolstoy’s book War and Peace, the Russian writer had his character Pierre Bezúkhov learn “that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity” So often we find ourselves striving for the superfluity. We are not content with what we have and think that happiness comes from having more or acquiring more or being more. We look for happiness but go in the wrong direction to find it.

The story is told of Ali Hafed, a wealthy ancient Persian who owned much land and many productive fields, orchards, and gardens and had money out at interest. He had a lovely family and at first was contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented.

An old priest came to Ali Hafed and told him that if he had a diamond the size of his thumb, he could purchase a dozen farms like his. Ali Hafed said, “Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?”

The priest told him, “If you will find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains, in those white sands you will always find diamonds.”

Said Ali Hafed, “I will go.”

So he sold his farm, collected his money that was at interest, and left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds, traveling through many lands in Asia and Europe. After years of searching, his money was all spent, and he passed away in rags and wretchedness.

Meanwhile, the man who purchased Ali Hafed’s farm one day led his camel out into the garden to drink, and as the animal put his nose into the shallow waters, the farmer noticed a curious flash of light in the white sands of the stream. Reaching in, he pulled out a black stone containing a strange eye of light. Not long after, the same old priest came to visit Ali Hafed’s successor and found that in the black stone was a diamond. As they rushed out into the garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers, they came up with many more beautiful, valuable gems. According to the story, this marked the discovery of the diamond mines of Golconda, the most valuable diamond mines in the history of the ancient world.

Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or anywhere in his own fields, rather than traveling in strange lands where he eventually faced starvation and ruin, he would have had “acres of diamonds” (story paraphrased from Russell H. Conwell, Acres of Diamonds [1960], 10–14).

We feel only pity for Ali Hafed as we picture him wandering homeless and friendless farther and farther away from the happiness he thought he would find in digging up diamonds in a far-off place. Yet how many times do we look for our happiness at a distance in space or time rather than right now, in our own homes, with our own families and friends?

Some years ago a special child was born to a young mother. This child was born without eyes. It was normal in all other respects except there was nothing to resemble eyes or sockets above the nose. This mother might in bitterness have said, “Why did this have to happen to my child?” or “Why did this have to happen to me?” Instead she said, “The Lord must really love us and have confidence in us. We really must be favored to have been given this child. To think the Lord picked our home, knowing how much special love and care this child would need, is very humbling and comforting. We are grateful for this special child and for the blessings it will bring to our home.”

The Savior of the world taught us to seek that inner peace which taps the innate happiness in our souls. He said: “My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

In the story The Little Prince, the fox was wiser than he knew when he said, “Now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, translated by Katherine Woods [1943], 70). The odyssey to happiness lies in the dimension of the heart. Such a journey is made on stepping-stones of selflessness, wisdom, contentment, and faith. The enemies of progress and fulfillment are such things as self-doubt, a poor self-image, self-pity, bitterness, and despair. By substituting simple faith and humility for these enemies, we can move rapidly in our search for happiness.

Many speak these days about the rights of consumers to enjoy products that are “free, perfect, and now”—that is, at low cost, with no defects, and immediate service. The problem is that too many of us try to consumehappiness rather than generate it. Shakespeare expressed a philosophy inAs You Like It that seems commendable: “I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good” (act 3, scene 2, lines 65–67). Earning what we eat will make us self-sufficient, but giving back a little by helping our neighbor will bring us something more. For example, if you deliver to an atomic energy breeder reactor the energy of three truckloads of fuel, it will return the energy of four or maybe five truckloads of fuel. Happiness, like the breeder reactor, adds and multiplies as we divide it with others.

I realize that many of us are not wealthy. One poor man said, “I know that money isn’t everything. For example, it isn’t mine.” And another observed, “Even books on how to be happy without money cost more than I can afford.” (Both quotes are from Sam Levenson, You Don’t Have to Be inWho’s Who to Know What’s What [1979], 185.) However, the relationship of money to happiness is at best questionable. An unknown author said, “Money is an article that may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven, and as a universal provider of everything except happiness.” Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) reminded us: “Money may buy the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It brings food, but not the appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.”

An unknown poet has written:

Success is speaking words of praise,

In cheering other people’s ways,

In doing just the best you can

With every task and every plan.

It’s silence when your speech would hurt,

Politeness when your neighbor’s curt.

It’s deafness when the scandal flows

And sympathy with others’ woes.

It’s loyalty when duty calls.

It’s courage when disaster falls.

It’s patience when the hours are long.

It’s found in laughter and in song.

It’s in the silent time of prayer,

In happiness and in despair.

In all of life and nothing less,

We find the thing we call success.

In summation, our search for happiness largely depends on the degree of righteousness we attain, the degree of selflessness we acquire, the amount and quality of service we render, and the inner peace that we enjoy. We also have some external sources of happiness, including those loved ones and friends whose smiles and regard mean so much to us. 

This above was by James E. Faust and it's the truth. Happiness is a choice. Choose it :) Be happy despite the situations around you. Happiness is contagious and everyone wants to catch it. Share it and always pay it forward lovelies.