Positively Positive

Tossing and turning. Sleeping, yet waking up exhausted. Waking up during the night. Though these are all common complaints, it doesn’t make them any less aggravating. The trouble is, much of what we do during the day can undermine our ability to sleep at night. So what’s a bleary-eyed person to do?

Make a Few Simple Changes by Day to Snooze Like a Pro at Night.

1. Work in Your Workout

Exercise is one of your best defenses against insomnia, but just don’t do it too close to bedtime. To get the best nighttime sleep benefit, slip your workout in about four to six hours before turning in for the night.

More of a morning person? No problem. Studies show that people are more likely to stick to a routine if they exercise first thing, so if morning’s your sweet spot, keep up the good work.

2. Tuck Your Belly in for the Night

If you want to rest easier tonight, have your biggest meal of the day at lunch. Eat a lighter dinner, at least three hours before bedtime, to insure the digestive process is well under way and starting to wind down before you hit the hay. Eating too close to bedtime forces your body to work overtime, digesting well into the wee hours, when it should be resting.

3. Sack the Late Night Snacks

Late night snacks? Skip them if you want to sleep better tonight. Refined grains and sugars before bed can raise blood sugar levels and overstress the organs involved in hormone regulation. This hormone roller coaster can contribute to waking you up throughout the night as hormone levels fluctuate.

4. Dry up Your Act

Too many liquids can effect how well and how long you sleep. Try not to drink too much before turning in. Generally, limiting liquids in the four hours before bed can help cut down the number of nighttime strolls to the bathroom.

5. Deprive Your Senses a Little

A quiet, dark room is essential to a good night’s sleep; it’s up to you to make it a sleep-promoting space, and fortunately, that’s easy to do. Pick up a pair of blackout curtains to keep the room darker longer or use an old-fashioned sleep mask. To drown out the sounds of the street, the neighbors, your snoring bedmate, or other noise disruptions, try using earplugs, a white noise machine, or a fan that hums.

6. Try a Tad of Melatonin

The occasional dose of melatonin can be helpful when you can’t fall asleep. For many of my patients, melatonin in low doses—a half to two milligrams—for short periods helps regulate sleep rhythms.

7. Let Nutrients Send You into the Arms of Morpheus

Sleep comes easier when you calm the body and mind. Try a nutrient formula that has some calming amino acids, such as L Theanine (100-300 mg), 5 HTP (50-100 mg), GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid) (100-400 mg), and some herbs, which also have a sedative effect, like Valerian root (Valeriana Offcinalis), Passion flower (Passifora Incarnata), and Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis). Taking minerals, in particular magnesium (300-500 mg), at night is also helpful.

8. Have a Chat with your Medicine Man or Woman

Ask your doctor if any medications you’re taking could be contributing to your sleeplessness and see if they can suggest a less sleep-disruptive alternative. A few common sleep-stealers: antihistamines, diuretics, antipsychotics, antidepressants, decongestants, asthma medications, and some blood pressure medicines.

Best wishes for a fantastic sleep!

Dr. Frank Lipman. M.D. is an acclaimed Integrative Physician and the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City. For over twenty years, his personal brand of healing has helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and recover their zest for life. Focused on sustainable wellness—instead of quick fixes—he offers patients a customized blend of Western medicine with acupuncture, nutritional counseling, vitamins and herbs, relaxation techniques, physical therapy, and bodywork. In 2010, he developed Be Well by Dr. Frank Lipman, a line of leading-edge supplements and health programs. He is the author of Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again and Total Renewal: 7 Key Steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health.

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

*Photo by thejbird.

It’s the time of year when your regularly scheduled programming for nutrition, exercise, and centering activities (like meditation and journaling) is interrupted for party hopping, shopping, and travelling. Throw into the mix the pressure of spending money and time (with perhaps some stress-inducing relatives), and it’s a wonder anyone says “Happy Holidays.”

Just as with the other eleven months of the year, you have a choice in whether you make your holidays merry and bright or, well, not so much.

In the busyness of the season, anxiety and depression can be gifts you’d rather not unwrap. But, they can be returned.

The key is to make a conscious effort to maintain a mind and body balance. While “mind/body connection” and “balance” are buzzwords that are often misconstrued and misunderstood, my friend and fellow Positively Positive contributor Dr. Frank Lipman and I want to offer some practical, easy daily tools to help you find a little more presence this holiday (your presence, by the way, is the ultimate present, despite what Target and Best Buy want you to believe).

7 Daily Tips for Better Holiday Presence

Cut the Caffeine

Switch to decaf or, better yet, herbal tea. Caffeine is a stimulant that can trigger anxiety and depression by making your thoughts and mind feel chaotic. It is also extremely acidic, which leads to inflammation (a factor in many diseases and ailments, such as heart problems, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and weight gain) and a diuretic (causes dehydration).

Drinking. Messy or Merry?

As with caffeine, alcohol is acidic and dehydrating. Drinking can also overwork your liver and may interfere with your body’s ability to properly use oxygen, which can make you more sensitive to stress. Also, alcohol masks the symptoms of anxiety because it is a depressant (meaning it slows down the nervous system and increases feelings of sadness) and is a form of self-medication that ultimately exaggerates the problem.

Water to the Rescue

As mentioned above, alcohol and caffeine lead to dehydration, as do processed, sugary foods and a general lack of sufficient hydration. Dehydration interferes with proper brain and body functioning, which can be a trigger for anxiety and depression. Aim to consume half of your body weight in ounces of water per day.

Foods high in water content also count—so load up on the fruits and veggies. When your body does not get enough water, it starts to conserve and prioritize allocation, meaning certain body processes suffer. Increasing water intake flushes toxins and other depression contributing elements from your system at a faster rate and keeps your brain, digestive, and circulatory systems in their prime.

Get Enough Zzzzz… for Belly and Brain

Lack of sleep can make you more vulnerable to anxiety by making you edgy, unfocused, and hormonally imbalanced. And generalized feelings of tiredness worsen depressive symptoms.

Holiday parties can often lead you to grazing late into the evening. Remember, every part of your body needs its rest, including your belly! Get into the habit of resting your digestive system for at least ten hours a night. This means that if you eat breakfast at 7:00 a.m., try not to eat anything after 9:00 p.m. Another tip: don’t eat within two hours of bedtime so your digestive system isn’t revved up while you’re trying to get everything to hush.

Seven to eight hours of sleep a night is recommended for your body to renew, restore, and replenish.

Move Your Body

Do any sort of physical activity for a minimum of thirty minutes a day. It does not have to be thirty solid minutes. Take the stairs and walk whenever you can. Do some crunches and pushups while watching television. If you are not sure what to do, don’t stress about it! Whatever you enjoy doing that ups your heart rate is perfect. Exercise helps flush toxins and lowers anxiety and depression-provoking chemicals and hormones while it increases feel-good hormones.

Breathe. Release. Repeat.

Deep breathing slows the body’s rhythms and restores calm. This is a super effective and completely free way of ritualizing relaxation and being present.

RPM (Rise Pee Meditate)—from my meditation maestro and another Positively Positive contributor DavidJi. Wake up five minutes earlier to just sit in silence and stillness and set the tone for your day.
Throughout the day, schedule your cell phone to vibrate every three or four hours to take five deeps breaths.

Common breathing technique: Breathe in deeply through your nose and exhale out of your mouth with a sigh. On each inhale, breathe in love, expansion, and joy, and on each exhale, breathe out any tension or fatigue.

Savor the Flavors

Eating slowly gives your body enough time to gear up, stoke the digestive fires, and signal to the gastrointestinal system that it’s time for digestion. Gulping your food down in a hurry is like piling logs in the fireplace and expecting a crackling fire to materialize without striking a match.

I hope you take the time to implement some of these suggestions. You are worth the effort!

If your depression and anxiety are debilitating to the point of interfering with daily functioning, please seek treatment from a licensed professional. Therapy is a gift you can give yourself even if you are not suffering from clinical depression and anxiety. Consider it one hour a week that you do not have to take care anyone but yourself!

In the spirit of the season, we want to gift a member of the Positively Positive community a spot in our 21-Day Mind/Body Cleanse! In the comments section, tell us what you are struggling with, why creating and sustaining a healthy way of life has proved challenging for you, and what you hope this new balance will bring to your life. We will announce the winner in my blog next Friday, December 14^th. We want you to ignite a revolution to achieving your resolutions in 2013!

Love Love Love

Terri and Dr. Frank

Terri Cole, founder and CEO of Live Fearless and Free, is a licensed psychotherapist, transformation coach, and an expert at turning fear into freedom. A cornerstone of Terri’s practice, meditation, was the impetus for her recently released guided mediation CD Meditation Transformation. Terri can be found on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

*Liver-Palooza! A fundraiser for my sister’s liver transplant*
December 15th. 2:00 pm. The Mercedes Club (550 W. 54th, NYC).

An afternoon of amazing people gathering for an amazing cause! Sweat with an Intensati workout from Patricia Moreno…Meditate with DavidJi…Bid on auction items like a seat to Marie Forleo’s B-School, a Personal Fire Starter Session with Danielle LaPorte, a year’s membership to Tara Stiles’ Strala Yoga, a 1-on-1 Session with Kris Carr, a seat to Mama Gena’s Pleasure Bootcamp, just to name a few…Shop for books, CDs, jewelry, and other perfect presents…Enjoy yummy food and giveaways…

*For a list of silent auction items, click here!
We’re still adding, so check back and come prepared on the 15th!

Donate $35 to Tammi’s Liver Transplant. Your receipt is your ticket to entry (PLUS! You get my downloadable meditation CD). Reserve Your Space Now!

*Photo by kelp1966.

Though sleep disorders are hardly new—even Aristotle wrote about them—our modern round-the-clock lifestyles plus caffeine, alcohol, lack of exercise, stress, and a myriad of other factors have conditioned our bodies to stay awake.

Sleep, at times, seems like the impossible dream, and staying up is wearing us out.

So is there hope for the bleary-eyed? Is a good night’s rest even possible these days? Absolutely! But first, you’ll need to brush up on your sleeping skills and make a few simple daytime changes so you can sleep better tonight. Here’s where to start:

1. Get into a sleepy-time groove.

Getting up and going to bed around the same time, seven nights a week is one of the most important things you can do to establish good sleep habits. Waking and sleeping at regular times reinforces a consistent sleep rhythm and reminds the brain when to release those all-important sleep and wake hormones.

2. Lost sleep is lost.

Going to bed extra early Sunday night after Saturday night’s debauch won’t help you “make up” for lost sleep. Instead, it’ll throw off your body clock even further, making quality sleep more elusive. Take a power-nap if you really need it (see below), but again, go to bed at your normal bedtime to maintain a consistent sleep routine.

3. Nap like a grown-up.

Toddlers need two-hour naps; adults don’t. A grown-up power-nap should be no more than twenty to thirty minutes, preferably before 4:00 p.m. Long or late afternoon naps damage sleep rhythm and make it tougher to fall asleep at night.

4. Rest your belly.

To rest easier, eat light at night, at least three hours before bed. This will help ensure that the digestive process is well under way and nearing completion before you hit the hay. Eating close to bedtime forces your body to work well into the wee hours, digesting when it should be resting.

5. Snack late, pay later.

Refined grains and sugars at night can raise blood sugar and overstress the organs involved in hormone regulation throughout the body. This roller coaster can contribute to waking you up throughout the night as hormone levels bounce up and down. My advice? You’ll sleep better tonight if you just say no to late night snack attacks.

6. Dry up your act.

Late night liquids can disrupt sleep with frequent trips to the loo, so cut yourself off about four hours before you turn in for the night to extend your bouts of uninterrupted sleep.

7. Deprive your senses.

To sleep better, you’ll need a quiet, dark room. Blackout curtains, an old-fashioned sleep mask, earplugs, plus a white noise machine (optional) will help block out common sleep-disrupters like street noise, streetlights, snoring partners, and early morning sun.

8. Chill out, dude.

A sleeping temperature of sixty to sixty-eight degrees is best for most people, even in winter. In hot weather, a fan or an air-conditioner set at about seventy degrees will do the trick. “Chilling pillows” with cooling gel inserts and sheet-cooling devices can also make sleep more comfortable.

9. Prepare to sleep.

It’s important to prepare for sleep with a few day-ending rituals. Start by turning off all screens, computers, iPads, and so on an hour or two before bed. Engage in quieting activities that relax the body and downshift the mind to begin the transition to a sleep-friendly state.

10. Banish all electronics from the bedroom.

Kick electronics out of the bedroom. Their glowing lights and EMFs (electromagnetic field) can undermine your ability to power down at night. Even in seemingly innocuous doses, light can stop your melatonin levels from rising, which is essential to induce sleep and help you achieve the deep, restorative rest your body needs.

11. Use melatonin strategically.

When sleep proves elusive, melatonin in low doses for short periods (no more than a week or two at a time) can help regulate sleep rhythms. Generally, ½ mg – 2 mg about an hour and a half before bed will do the trick. Keep in mind, however, for some people, overuse of melatonin can actually disrupt sleep, so use it sparingly and follow the manufacturer’s dosing instructions.

12. Power down with calming nutrients.

Instead of sleeping pills or alcohol, try herbs or supplements with calming effects about a half an hour to an hour before bedtime. Magnesium (300-600 mg) is a wonderful calming mineral and can help induce sleep. Also helpful are the amino acids L theanine (100-500 mg), 5 HTP (50-100 mg), taurine, and GABA or herbs like lemon balm, passion flower, chamomile, magnolia, and valerian root taken per package instructions. The Be Well Sleep Formula contains most of these nutrients, all in one formula.

13. Catch a sleep wave.

If you can’t fall asleep within forty-five minutes, get up and out of the bedroom. Keep the lights low and try a calming, screen-free activity, like reading or knitting. Wait about sixty to ninety minutes before going back to bed. Staying in bed trying to fall asleep (instead of getting up) will only stress you out more and will train your brain not to recognize bedtime as sleep time.

14. Have a chat with your doc.

Do you take prescription drugs? They could be contributing your sleeplessness. Among the more common sleep stealers are antihistamines, diuretics, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, decongestants, asthma medications, and some blood-pressure medicines. If you suspect they may be undermining your sleep, ask the doc if you can switch to a more sleep-supportive alternative.

Which natural sleep aides work for you? Please share in the comments.

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

*Photo Credit: Josh Liba via Compfight cc

Many of us have done a detox in order to eliminate internal toxins from our body, but how many of us do anything about the toxins in our own homes?

Common household and body care products are increasingly being found to have negative health effects on the nervous and immune systems, on our reproductive systems, and on our endocrine, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems.

The average home contains 500-1,000 chemicals, many of which we are unable to see, smell, or taste. While these chemicals may be tolerated individually and in small doses, problems can arise when one is exposed to them in combination or in larger doses. Everyone’s tolerance level is different depending on genetics, nutritional status, and previous contacts with many chemicals, but the negative effects of household toxins are often compounded by the use of other drugs, especially the habitual use of alcohol or prescription or recreational drugs.

Indoor air is typically 2-5 times more polluted than outdoor air. Home insulation, so wonderful for keeping our homes warm in winter and cool in summer, doesn’t allow fresh air in, so we’re constantly breathing in the same stale air. Wall to wall carpeting keeps us cozy, but can introduce a myriad of toxins to our well-insulated homes. It can also trap dirt, fleas, dust, dust-mites, and lead.

Many of the cleaning products we use to clean our furniture, bathrooms, windows, etc. are full of toxic chemicals, some of which do not even appear on the labels. Similarly, with the many personal care products we put on our skin and the pet care products we use on our pets.

Most tick and flea products contain active ingredients and solvents that might cause cancer in animals. Also, substantial human exposure is possible by absorption through the skin while playing with and handling the pet.

The pesticides we use on our gardens eliminate not only plant pests but also most of the insects that are beneficial to help control these pests. Of the thirty most commonly used lawn chemicals, nineteen have studies pointing toward cancer, and fifteen are known to cause nervous system poisoning.

This is not to say that we should not keep our houses comfortable and clean and our yards looking good. What’s important is to understand that how we do this can have an important impact on our health. Abundant toxins can and do lead to health problems.

Taking more care to reduce our exposure to both internal and external toxins by detoxing our bodies and our living space allows the body’s own detoxification to function more efficiently. This strengthens our resilience to the daily onslaught of factors impacting our health.

There are many things you can do to “detox” your home, some more practical than others.

Here are my twenty suggestions:

1. No shoes in the house (as most household dirt, pesticides, and lead come in on your shoes). Go barefoot or wear slippers.

2. Place floor mats vertically by your entryways to wipe your shoes. This way, more dirt and residue from your shoes stays outside on the mat.

3. Keep the air clean. Keep your windows and doors open as much as possible to ventilate. Use green plants as natural air detoxifiers. Remove odors with baking soda. Use fresh flowers or bowls of herbs, like rosemary and sage, to add a pleasant fragrance to rooms. Have your air ducts and vents cleaned with nontoxic cleaners. Get a portable air cleaner/purifier, especially for the bedrooms.

4. Switch from the standard household cleaning products to cleaner and greener ones. These don’t damage your health or the environment’s as much and work as well as the mass marketed ones. You can also use basic ingredients you have around the house, for instance vinegar in place of bleach, baking soda to scrub your tiles, and hydrogen peroxide to remove stains. According to Annie Bond, the author of Better Basics for the Home, she can clean anything with water and these five basic ingredients: baking soda, washing soda, distilled white vinegar, vegetable based liquid soap (e.g. Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Soap), and tea tree oil.

5. Replace your skin care and personal products with less toxic and chemical free options. Deodorant, toothpaste, cosmetics, hair products, nail polish, and perfumes are often loaded with toxins. Learn how to identify them and avoid them.

6. Use plastics wisely (as some contain Bisphenol A [BPA], which is linked to cancer, and Phtalates, which are linked to endocrine and developmental problems). Avoid plastic food packaging when you can. Don’t wrap food in plastic. Don’t microwave food in plastic containers. Choose baby bottles made from glass or BPA-free plastic. Avoid vinyl teethers for your baby. Stay away from children’s toys marked with a “3″ or “PVC.” Avoid plastic shower curtains.

7. Avoid non-stick pans, pots, bake ware, and utensils (as Teflon contains perfluorinated chemicals [PFCs] which have been linked to cancer and developmental problems).

8. Keep house dust to a minimum (as more dust means more toxins). Mop all surfaces at least once a week. Use a vacuum cleaner (with a HEPA filter, preferably) for your carpets. HEPA-filter vacuums capture the widest range of particles and get rid of allergens.

9. Avoid excess moisture (as it encourages the growth of mold and mildew). Check areas for moisture accumulation or leaks (particularly basements). Regularly clean surfaces where mold usually grows—around showers and tubs and beneath sinks.

10. Get a shower filter (as many of the contaminants in tap water become gases at room temperature). A shower filter can help keep these toxins from becoming airborne.

11. Get a water filter (as more than 700 chemicals have been identified in drinking water). Filtering your tap water is better than drinking bottled water.

12. Avoid stain-guarded clothing, furniture, and carpets (due to the presence of PFCs). Wrinkle free and permanent press fabrics used for clothing and bedding commonly contain formaldehyde. Use untreated fabrics where possible.

13. Be conscious of toxins in carpeting, especially in products made from synthetic materials. Use natural fiber wool and cotton rugs. If possible, replace your wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors, all natural linoleum, or ceramic tiles. Use nontoxic glues, adhesives, stains, or sealers for installation.

14. Seal (with a non toxic sealer) or replace particleboard walls, floors, or cabinets (which often contain formaldehyde, which can emit irritating and unhealthy fumes for decades). Avoid plywood, fiberglass, fiberboard, and paneling.

15. Avoid harmful pet care products and avoid toxic pest control (including traditional termite exterminators).

16. Replace toxic lawn and garden pesticides and herbicides with less harmful natural ones.

17. Tell the dry cleaner not to use the plastic wrap or remove it as soon as possible (as the plastic traps the dry cleaning chemicals on clothes and in your closet). Let your dry cleaning air out (preferably outside) before storing it. Use “wet cleaning” if you are lucky enough to have it in your area.

18. Use low VOC, low odor latex (water based) paint. Open all windows to ventilate properly when painting indoors.

19. Have your house checked for carbon monoxide leaks (most commonly found in leaking gas stoves, gas fireplaces, furnaces, chimneys, and gas water heaters).

20. Check Radon levels in poorly ventilated basements that have cracked walls and/or floors. Radon is an odorless gas that forms as uranium in rocks and soil breaks down. Radon is linked to lung cancer.

We can reduce our risk of chronic illness by limiting our exposure to these toxins, but don’t let this become an obsession which can cause so much stress that it creates more of a negative impact on your health than the toxins themselves.

And finally, no amount of environmental toxins is as important as emotional toxicity. You can do all the above, but if your house is full of anger, resentment, jealousy, unhappiness, and a lack of love, compassion, and forgiveness, the house will remain toxic.

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

*Photo Credit: susanaudrey via Compfight cc

When patients first visit my office, I always make it my business to find out not only about their health histories and lifestyle habits, but also what they eat. Fortunately, these days patients are more knowledgeable about nutrition than they were even five or ten years ago, so that makes the job of turning their health around a bit easier. However, many people still have some rather retro ideas about what’s a health food and what’s not, so I and my Be Well nutrition team often have to engage in some re-education, to guide patients on their journey to sustainable and optimal health.

What follows is my two part post on ten foods most often mistaken for health foods – and the truly healthy, nutrition options to trade them in for:

1. Put Down the Juice Box

These days many people are dropping sugary sodas in favor of juices like blueberry, black currant and cherry, which are perceived as healthier because of their high concentration of antioxidants. Problem is, most fruit juices come up nutritionally short, because they deliver little in the way of fiber, plus loads of extra sugar you don’t need, unless perhaps you’re chasing your juice with a twenty mile run. If you want fruit, eat whole fruit. If you want a drink, pour yourself a glass of organic tea, a phyto-greens drink, coconut water or plain water. If it’s fruit flavor you crave, top a 2 oz. shot of unsweetened organic fruit juice with plenty of water or seltzer and enjoy. But whatever you do, don’t kid yourself into thinking that juices are an even nutritional swap for whole fruits, because they’re not. Instead, set a good example for your kids (and yourself!) and:

Eat your fruit, don’t drink it. @DrFrankLipman (Click to Tweet!)

2. Stop Guzzling the Gatorade

Unless you’re wearing a Super Bowl ring, or have just finished an Ironman race, strike commercial sports drinks from your list. They’re full of sugar, artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and numerous mysterious ingredients that do little to support health and could be undermining it. In fact, until recently, Gatorade contained brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, a suspected carcinogen used in flame-retardants! Instead, try quenching your flames of thirst with my simple home-made sports drinks. They’ll help replenish your body with health supporting fluids, not chemical cocktails!

3. Energy Bars Are More Like Candy Bars in Fancier Wrappers

Most of the “energy bars” you’ll find within easy reach – those sold at the supermarket or the deli—are essentially glorified candy bars masquerading as health food. Convenient as they may be, they’re crummy substitutes for real food. Even the “good” high-end bars tend to be heavily-processed sugar-bombs with hardly enough protein or fiber to make them worth eating. And lower-end bars are worse, made with cheap, genetically-modified and/or pesticide-soaked ingredients (soy, oats, nuts, fillers, etc.), then glued together with seemingly “healthy” but actually sugar-packed coatings like chocolate, yoghurt, honey, maple syrup, etc. My advice? Eat them only if you’re stuck on a desert island and there’s nothing left to eat except your shirt. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and make your own, nutrient-dense bars or assemble a few small bags of organic trail mix and keep a supply in your briefcase, gym bag and desk to squash hunger and boost energy.

4. Whole Wheat Doesn’t Make It Healthy

Millions of people are still fooled by the idea that anything with whole wheat slapped on the label means it’s good for you. In a nutshell: it’s not. The overwhelming majority of our whole-wheat products these days are, like the energy bars mentioned above, heavily-processed, sugar-packed and made with factory-farmed, sometimes genetically-modified ingredients, raised in nutrient depleted soil and drenched in pesticides. If that weren’t enough, modern wheat is our biggest dietary source of gluten, which much of the population is either sensitive or allergic to, whether they’re aware of it or not. Gluten-sensitivity can trigger digestive problems, chronic inflammation and disease, making whole-wheat, anything but a health food. Ideally, the wisest way to support your health is to kick all wheat altogether. But if bread is an absolute must for you, make every bite truly nutritious and make your own – it’s easier than you think. Here’s the Be Well gang’s favorite gluten-free paleo-bread recipe from Elana’s Pantry.

5. Soy’s Not Exactly a Health Food Either

A few months back I wrote a post on the numerous concerns that I and many of my colleagues have with soy – and why I regularly advise my patients to avoid it. When I say soy is not a health food, I’m talking about the typical genetically-modified, pesticide-doused soy you find blended into countless processed foods found at the supermarket. The easiest way to purge soy from your diet is to eliminate processed foods, as well as the more obvious sources like soy milk, soy cheese, etc. However, if you’re not willing to give up soy, aim to eat only organic fermented soy products, such as tempeh, miso and natto, that are also marked non-GMO, gluten and pesticide-free. Keep portion sizes small and don’t eat it every day; once or twice a week is plenty.

Watch out for part two of five more foods most often mistaken for health foods – and what to eat instead.

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Image courtesy of The Food Junk.

In my earlier post, we looked at the first five so-called health foods that are often mistaken as good for you, but in actuality are anything but. As even those who are knowledgeable about nutrition can be fooled by hard-to-decipher labels, slick marketing campaigns or mom’s out-of-date advice leftover from childhood, here’s the remaining not-so-favorite five unhealthy foods, often mistaken for the good stuff:

6. Say No to Faux Butter, Chemical Spreads and Margarine!

No matter what your momma told you, margarine isn’t a health food – and might be better used as floor wax than a foodstuff. Though you may have grown up thinking that yellow glop was healthier than butter, those man-made spreads, sprays and faux-butter substitutes are filled with cheap, processed vegetable oils, fillers and artificial ingredients, all of which can take a serious toll on your heart and arteries. Worse, they don’t even taste good! So what’s the point of eating them? Instead of faux, switch to real, grass-fed, organic butter. It’s delicious, satisfying and full of good fats. It’s also a good source of health-enhancing conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which helps protect against cancer and encourages muscle growth, plus vitamins A, D and E, all of which are essential to good health. To read more about butter’s surprising benefits, click here.

7. Fish From the Farm Can Do You Harm

Everybody knows that fish is a good way to get your protein and good fats. Problem is, we’re often not eating the right stuff, which is wild fish, preferably pole-caught. Instead, most people eat factory-farmed fish, meaning fish that is raised by an industry whose sole mission it is to produce more fish quicker, faster, larger and cheaper. Raised in cramped, filthy tanks and pens, factory-farmed fish are prone to illness, which necessitates feeding them drugs, antifungals and/or pesticides to encourage survival till harvest time. With a life like that, it’s easy to see why these stressed-out, drugged-up, poorly fed creatures make an unhealthy meal – even more so when the fish is then processed, battered, fried, rolled in breadcrumbs, frozen and shipped to market. Compared to their wild-fish counterparts, farmed fish deliver roughly twenty percent less protein, twice as much inflammation-boosting omega 6 fatty acid, fewer omega 3’s and nutrients – so I say leave those fish down on the farm. Instead, choose certified wild fish whenever possible, or look for fish from smaller-scale, artisanal or boutique-style fish farms, which practice sustainable and eco-friendly techniques.

8. Grab a Diet Coke….And Pour it Down the Drain

If you’re still drinking diet soda, you might want to have your head examined, and perhaps a bone-density test while you’re at it. Diet drinks are foul-tasting, man-made chemical cocktails, devoid of nutrition, full of sodium and made with artificial colors that only a mad scientist could love. They’re also loaded with anything-but-natural sweeteners, which have been shown to have an appetite-triggering effect – so you’re likely to eat more, not less! Need another reason to kick the can? Diet sodas undermine health: according to a University of Minnesota study, just one diet soda a day was associated with a thirty-six percent increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes. And other studies have established a link between diet cola use and bone density loss. My advice? Drop the pop, both diet and sugared, and switch to water, or teas like rooibos, hibiscus or green, all of which deliver wonderful health benefits – and taste great too!

9. Pretzels and Popcorn Won’t Keep You Trim or Full

Crunch, crunch, crunch. We are a nation of snackers. Problem is, most of us are snacking way too much on things that were once touted as healthy but ultimately wound up having the opposite effect. A case in point – pretzels. A favorite among dieters for their seemingly nominal fat and calorie count, pretzels have a dark side: they’re a salt, corn oil and flour bomb that spikes blood sugar and delivers no nutritional bang for your buck. And twenty minutes after scarfing down a few fistfuls, you’re hungry again, so what’s the point of eating them in the first place? If it’s that crunch you need, munch on raw veggies, baked apple slices, kale chips, dried seaweed, or a handful of nuts. As long as your snacks are delivering nutrients, and not chemicals or blood sugar spikes, you win.

10. Fro-yo and Smoothies and Pinkberry, Oh My!

Everybody likes a treat now and then, but it seems like these days there’s a frozen treat on just about every corner – and the wise eater should just keep walking. But doc, it’s yoghurt! It’s a fruit smoothie! It’s good for me! Uh, isn’t it? The answer is, unfortunately, no because most commercial fro-yo and smoothie joints pack their treats with sugar, so they can easily hook you and keep you coming back for another fix. So, how to treat yourself to a healthy treat when you’re not at home? Trade fro-yo for a small container of unsweetened, plain full fat yoghurt and add a scoop of nuts and or chopped fruit from the salad bar. And if it’s a smoothie you’re craving, tell them to hold the sugar, which often gets tossed into the blender when you’re not looking. Among hidden sources of extra smoothie sugar that can easily turn a good smoothie to a sugar bomb: apple, mango, passion fruit, orange juices; simple syrup, ice cream and bananas. Ask for your own custom, simple smoothie made only with unsweetened almond milk or water, ice, fruit and powered greens or protein if available to insure you’re getting only the essentials. Ultimately, though, the best ones you can make are the ones you make yourself! Click here for our favorite Be Well smoothie recipes.

Bottom line:

When it comes to food, keep it real and eat it whole - and if it’s faux, just say no! @DrFrankLipman (Click to Tweet!)

Strike the tent tricksters from your shopping list and swap ‘em for truly healthy, nutritionally-valuable foods that will sustain and optimize your health.

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Image courtesy of Peter Hinsdale.

Sleep. We all know we need it, but with our twenty-four hour lifestyles, many people view sleep as a waste of time that could be better spent doing just about anything else.

Problem is, when you skimp on sleep you’re not only making yourself tired and compromising your ability to fight off everyday ills, you’re also speeding the aging process, driving weight gain and increasing your risk for diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular problems.

Get enough sleep though and you’re treating your body to the greatest body and brain-boosting anti-aging treatment there is. So next time you think, “Oh, I can get by on four hours,” re-think your sleep strategy and set the alarm for a few hours later.

Lack of Sleep Makes You Fat

Under sleeping disrupts metabolism and hormonal balance in numerous ways, many of which reinforce each other. In fact, too few zzz’s set the stage for problems far weightier than just yawning a lot – you’re creating the perfect conditions for fat accumulation!

Too little sleep triggers these hormonal fat-makers:

Too much cortisol — which cues your body to hold on to fat
Too much ghrelin — which causes you to get hungry – the higher the levels, the hungrier you’ll be
Not enough glucagon — which is essential for fat-burning
Not enough leptin — which makes you feel full – come up short and you wind up eating more
Not enough human growth hormone (HGH) — which, when levels drop, makes your weight more likely to rise
Not enough adiponectin — which helps breakdown fat and promotes insulin sensitivity

Too Little Sleep Makes You Feel Older, Faster

Lack of sleep is the fast-track to feeling old before your time. @DrFrankLipman
(Click to Tweet!)

Not getting enough quality sleep contributes to many of the pesky problems people write off as simply part of the aging process. We’re talking weight gain, slowed metabolism, memory issues, brain fog, weakened immunity and low moods — feeling irritable, helpless, easily frustrated, anxious, and/or depressed.

The good news is, often it’s not aging that’s the culprit, it’s a simple lack of sleep. To feel (and look) younger get a sound seven or eight hours a night, or as close to that as you can manage. Think of it as the cure for premature aging.

Not Enough Sleep Wrecks Your Health

Whether you know it or not, sleep is anything but unproductive — your brain and body are actually very active when you’re down for the count. They’re busy refreshing, repairing and rejuvenating just about every cell in the body, so if you don’t make time for sleep, you’re disabling your body’s ability to recharge and heal itself. In fact, while you’re snoozing, your body is performing a number of essential tasks to keep you vibrant. Among the biggies:

Muscle repair. When you exercise, muscles break down. Then they rebuild, growing larger and stronger—but only during sleep.
Brain chemistry balance. When you face a stressful challenge, your brain uses up supplies of key amino acids and other biochemicals which are restored when you sleep. That’s why you need more sleep, not less, when you are working extra hard.
Removal of toxic waste from the brain. A part of our body known as “the glymphatic system” is responsible for clearing toxins from the brain – and it’s only active during sleep.
Immune support. A library full of studies links lack of sleep to chronic disease but, on a more immediate level, you’ve probably noticed that when you’ve got too much going on and get run down, you’ll often catch a cold.
Pain relief. If you skimp on sleep, your pain threshold tends to drop, so it’s essential to give your parasympathetic nervous system time to let your body rest, digest—and heal
Memory boosts. Having senior moments or memory lapses? A lack of sleep could be to blame. Sleep is when you consolidate your memories—which means that without sleep your brain has a harder time processing, storing, and, ultimately, retrieving information.

In a nutshell, good, restful sleep keeps you vigorous, energized, and at a healthy weight – so get some of the good stuff tonight! Need to brush up on your sleeping skills?

Here are a few Pointers:

Darken your room with blackout curtains and/or get a sleep mask.
Turn off all electronic devices two hours before bed.
Stop caffeinated beverages completely, and avoid chocolate after 8 p.m
We sleep best in cool rooms, and warm beds, so if you’re having trouble sleeping, open the window or put on the AC, and get cozy under a blanket.

Dr. Frank Lipman. M.D. is an acclaimed Integrative Physician and the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City. For over twenty years, his personal brand of healing has helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and recover their zest for life. Focused on sustainable wellness—instead of quick fixes—he offers patients a customized blend of Western medicine with acupuncture, nutritional counseling, vitamins and herbs, relaxation techniques, physical therapy, and bodywork. In 2010, he developed Be Well by Dr. Frank Lipman, a line of leading-edge supplements and health programs. He is the author of Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again, Total Renewal: 7 Key Steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health, the NY Times Bestseller, The New Health Rules and the upcoming 10 Reasons You Feel Old & Get Fat...

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Image courtesy of Elisabet Dominguez.

Most of us have been programmed to believe that growing older is synonymous with getting fat, slow, forgetful, and sick. Like most people in our society, you might see the years from age forty onward as a slow, painful decline, marked by the following inevitable outcomes:

You gain weight.
You slow down.
You have to live with mysterious aches and pains.
You get sick more often.
It takes you longer to “bounce back” from any physical or emotional challenge.
You develop memory issues, “senior moments,” and brain fog.
You lose interest in sex or maybe lose some of your ability to perform.
You feel sadder, more depressed, and maybe also more anxious.

As a physician, I can agree that for many people over 40—and now, for an increasing number of folks in their 30s —these and other ailments do become more common. But I can also tell you with absolute certainty that they are not inevitable. If you know the right ways to eat, sleep, move, and de-stress, and if you commit to creating community, meaning, and passion in your life, the years of your 40s, 50s, and beyond can be some of the most rewarding and vital you have ever known.

How can I say this with such confidence? Because, the real obstacle for most of us isn’t age. It’s loss of function. Our bodies are perfectly capable of remaining slim and vigorous, and our brains can absolutely stay clear and sharp—if we give them what they need.

The problem is that most of us don’t do that. We buy into the myth that age means decline, and we buy into a lot of other myths as well. We misunderstand what our bodies need to function at their best, so we eat the wrong foods, skimp on sleep, and deprive our bodies of the movement they crave. We become overwhelmed by the pressures of our lives, burdened by an unremitting stress that saps our bodies of vitality and drains our life of joy. We take one medication after another, never realizing that they might be disrupting our bodies’ own innate ability to heal, depleting our bodies of essential nutrients and draining our natural resilience. Most insidious of all, many of us lack the personal support and community we need to feel fully human.

So yes, in that case, our body’s natural functions—our intricate systems of hormones, nerves, brain function, digestion, detoxification, and immune function—begin to break down. The wrong diet disrupts our gut, destroys our friendly bacteria, imbalances our hormones, and renders us vulnerable to brain fog, anxiety, and depression. A sedentary life leaves our bodies starved for movement. Lack of sleep literally shrinks our brains. Unnecessary medications cue our body to slow down and put on the pounds. And stress, isolation, and the loss of purpose create their own set of problems while making everything else worse.

That is what middle and old age look like for many of us. And for more and more of my patients, this process begins even before middle age. I have seen many people in their 30s and even in their 20s struggling with weight gain, stress, sleep issues, and feeling “old and fat before my time!”

But I can tell you as a physician that it’s not that way for me, nor for my patients who have worked with me for a while. And it doesn’t have to be that way for you.

What’s the secret? It’s actually quite simple:

Give Your Body What It Needs to Function At Its Best. @DrFrankLipman (Click to Tweet!)

Support your body with the food, movement, and sleep it requires. Nourish your mind and spirit with the meaning, purpose, and community they crave. Whatever your age, your reward will be a healthy weight, a vast reserve of energy, and a renewed sense of resilience, vitality, and joy.

You Don’t Have to Feel Old and Fat if You . . .

Eat the foods your body needs
Avoid the foods that stress your body
Support your microbiome—the community of friendly bacteria that lives throughout your body, governing your digestion, your immune system, and your mental health
Balance your hormones
Give your body the movement it craves
Find effective ways to cope with stress
Get all the good, restorative sleep your body needs
Minimize as far as possible the medications that can interfere with your body’s natural state of health
Supplement your diet with crucial nutrients
Reconnect to your sense of meaning, purpose, and community

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, 10 Reasons You Feel Old and Get Fat……And How YOU Can Stay Young, Slim and Happy.

Dr. Frank Lipman. M.D. is an acclaimed Integrative Physician and the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City. For over twenty years, his personal brand of healing has helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and recover their zest for life. Focused on sustainable wellness—instead of quick fixes—he offers patients a customized blend of Western medicine with acupuncture, nutritional counseling, vitamins and herbs, relaxation techniques, physical therapy, and bodywork. In 2010, he developed Be Well by Dr. Frank Lipman, a line of leading-edge supplements and health programs. He is the author of Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again, Total Renewal: 7 Key Steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health, the NY Times Bestseller, The New Health Rules and the upcoming 10 Reasons You Feel Old & Get Fat...

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Image courtesy of Dylan Luder.

Most of us were raised to believe that the genes we were born with are our destiny, and that the diseases that “run in the family” are most likely coming for us too. I myself have wrestled with this demon, as I have a strong family history of heart disease and I, now in my 60s, have many of the markers indicating that I should have heart disease as well.

Yet I have escaped the condition that seemed to be the genetic destiny of the other men in my family. Why?

Because even though I have all the genetic markers for heart disease, I don’t necessarily have to develop that condition. Whether I do will be determined by how I live my life: what I eat, how much I move, whether I get enough good sleep, how well I release stress, and which supplements I take.

We all have a lot more control over our health than we think. @DrFrankLipman (Click to Tweet!)

Where does our control lie? True, we can’t change our genes. But in the vast majority of cases, we can change how our genes express themselves. The science of genetic expression is known as epigenetics, and it is one of the most exciting frontiers of medical science.

Of course, some of our genes will always express themselves in the same way. For example, the genes that determine eye color are fixed by the time we emerge from the womb. No matter what we eat, we can’t turn our brown eyes blue! Likewise, certain genetic conditions, such as sickle-cell anemia or Tay-Sachs disease, are not affected by diet or lifestyle. If you have the genes for those conditions, you’ll suffer from those disorders no matter what you do.

The good news is that these “fixed” genes make up only about 2 percent of the total. The other 98 percent can be turned on or off. This is true for most of the disorders we associate with aging—Alzheimer’s, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. What you eat, how you exercise, whether you get enough sleep, how well you release stress, and which supplements you take to address your particular nutrient needs can all have an enormous impact on whether you develop these conditions—regardless of your genetic destiny. Your exposure to environmental toxins and your ability to detoxify your body also affect your genetic expression.

Whether you know it or not, you are affecting your own genetics daily and perhaps even hourly through the foods you eat, the air you breathe, and even the thoughts you think.

For example, you might have been born with a “fat” gene causing a tendency to obesity. Guess what—you can overcome your “fat” gene by avoiding sugar, refined starches, and the many other foods that disrupt your metabolism and imbalance your gut.

Or perhaps you were born with a gene giving you a predisposition to diabetes, or autoimmune disorders, or, like me, heart disease. Yes, you are more likely than other people to develop those disorders. However, you can turn off those genes by making the healthy choices that will maintain a healthy gut, support your friendly bacteria, and heal your inflammation.

Several studies have shown that lifestyle changes, both good and bad, trigger changes in gene expression. We have already seen how my own lifestyle changes have so far prevailed over my genetic tendency to heart disease. Likewise, many people have family histories of obesity and/or diabetes, yet with the right diet and lifestyle, they can avoid these chronic conditions.

It works the other way too. Your genetic inheritance includes at least some genes that improve your resilience, increase your longevity, and help you fight cancer. But if you smoke cigarettes or eat junk food rather than real food, you shut those genes down and inhibit their expression. Both good and bad choices continually “speak” to our genes and thereby modify the way our genes express themselves.

This is another reason why I am confident that you don’t have to get fat and you don’t have to feel old. Even if your parents suffered from an age-related disease—hypertension, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, stroke, or even cancer—you don’t have to go down that road. When you learn how to support your body, you are also learning how to shape your own genetic expression. Every day—maybe even every hour—your genes are responding to the food you eat, the air you breathe, the stress you encounter, the choices you make.

This is epigenetics, and it allows functional medicine to make an extraordinary promise:

Feed your genes the right “information” and you will modify the expression of your genes, improving the way your whole body functions.

And this is another reason why you don’t have to get fat and feel old, no matter what your family history might be. By following the precepts in my new book, you can reshape your genetic destiny, avoid age-related diseases, and live a life of glowing health.

This is an excerpt from my upcoming book, 10 Reasons You Feel Old and Get Fat……And How YOU Can Stay Young, Slim and Happy.

Dr. Frank Lipman. M.D. is an acclaimed Integrative Physician and the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City. For over twenty years, his personal brand of healing has helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and recover their zest for life. Focused on sustainable wellness—instead of quick fixes—he offers patients a customized blend of Western medicine with acupuncture, nutritional counseling, vitamins and herbs, relaxation techniques, physical therapy, and bodywork. In 2010, he developed Be Well by Dr. Frank Lipman, a line of leading-edge supplements and health programs. He is the author of Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again, Total Renewal: 7 Key Steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health, the NY Times Bestseller, The New Health Rules and the upcoming 10 Reasons You Feel Old & Get Fat...

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Image courtesy of stokpic.com.

Recently, I hosted a discussion on eating healthy and on my new book 10 Reasons You Feel Old and Get Fat. During the Q & A session, I was reminded by one of the attendees about one of the fundamental concerns people have about eating for wellness – for many people, it’s the cost. It’s not always cheap to eat well, but eating better is within reach for most people if they’re willing to make the effort and get creative about how they shop, cook and eat.

As I often say, eating as healthily as possible now is far cheaper than trying to fix medical problems down the road. @DrFrankLipman (Click to Tweet!)

Here are some practical tips to keep in mind particularly if you’re keeping a tight watch on the bottom line:

1. Shop the Produce Aisle Like a Chef

Look for fresh, local, in-season veggies and fruits, which are often considerably less expensive than those flown in from another hemisphere or trucked across the country. Shop several types of stores, from supermarkets to farmers markets, to green grocers, to the corner store to increase the odds of finding good deals on healthy, fresh foods.

2. Kick ‘Convenience’ Foods

Studies show that convenience foods cost more than whole ones and are less nutritious – so steer clear! All that manufacturing, packaging, trucking, shipping and advertising doesn’t come cheap, you know.

3. Keep It Real

Healthy foods are real foods – and none of them come out of the ground with nutrition labels! If it comes in a box or bag labeled with more than three – five ingredients, leave it on the shelf. Also, if you can’t pronounce or easily identify the ingredients (no matter how few or many there are), you’re better off without them.

4. Mix It Up

If eating all-organic, all-the-time is too pricey, then eat of mix of organic and non-organic foods. When it comes to foods like broccoli, spinach, apples, tomatoes, etc., try to eat organic most of the time to minimize your exposure to pesticides and toxins, and to ensure the most nutritional bang for your buck.

5. Shop With the Dirty Dozen/Clean Fifteen List

One of the easiest ways to save money on organic produce is to shop the aisle with the Environmental Working Group’s ‘Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen’ list in hand or on your phone. The list lays out which fruits and veggies you should always buy organic and which ones you don’t need to.

6. Embrace the Frozen Food Aisle

A great place to pick up fruits and veggies is in the frozen food aisle. Frozen foods, be they organic or otherwise, are picked at their peak so they retain much of their nutritional value and are ready anytime to toss into stir-fry dishes, soups and casseroles. Unlike fresh produce, they won’t spoil, which will save you money in the long run.

7. Fortify Meals Frugally With Inexpensive Fermented Foods

Like their frozen food cousins, fermented foods are fantastic money savers because they last for months in the fridge, so there’s little spoilage or waste. Better yet, fermented foods are excellent for supporting the health of your gut, are simple to make and taste delicious – they’re the total package!

8. Shop Around

Like the song says, ‘you gotta shop around’ to get the most nutrition for your buck. To keep costs in check, track the cost of your go-to foods and staple items with help from a shopping app so you can easily compare prices between local supermarkets, farmers markets, green grocers and ‘big box’ stores.

9. Take Advantage of Discounters

A cost-conscious patient recently shared her secret source for healthy food bargains: discounters Costco, TJ Maxx, Home Goods and Marshall’s, where she often buys her organic and non-GMO Project certified staple items like chia seeds, flax, quinoa, coffee, teas, coconut sugar and nuts.

10. Share the Good Stuff

Another way to get your share of healthy produce for less is to join a food co-op. You can also buy a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership and split costs with a neighbor. For low-income individuals, many CSAs offer low-cost memberships, making access to healthy food easier regardless of income.

11. Grow Your Own

Supplement your produce purchases by growing some of your own. Even if it’s the dead of winter or you’re a pressed-for-space apartment-dweller, it’s still possible create a small indoor garden. Among the easiest edibles to grow indoors: basil, lemongrass, radishes, mushrooms, salad greens, dwarf fruits and turmeric.

12. Mind Your Meats

One simple way to keep dollars in check is to eat less animal protein and buy it in smaller quantities, because no matter how you slice it, it can be costly. But look for 100% grass-fed meats from animals that have been humanely-treated, pasture-raised, without hormones or antibiotics, from organic or small local producers at the farmers market.

13. Manage Your Meats

Buy cheaper cuts of high quality meats and stretch them by using them as an ingredient in stews, soups and casseroles, rather than being the centerpiece of the meal. Love chicken? Try eating half an organic chicken breast instead of a whole one, or use shredded chicken as a tasty add-in to soup, salad or grain bowls. With less animal protein on your plate, there’ll be more room on your plate for plants, which is great for the health of your gut.

14, Slip the No-meat Cheats

If you’re cutting animal protein consumption, try to avoid swapping them for processed meat substitutes. Mock meats tend to be loaded with sodium, preservatives and anything-but-healthy ingredients – so you’re far better off eating a small amount of the real stuff instead.

For more ideas on how to make room on your plate for foods that truly enhance and support wellness, check out my healthy eating tip sheet.

Dr. Frank Lipman. M.D. is an acclaimed Integrative Physician and the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in New York City. For over twenty years, his personal brand of healing has helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and recover their zest for life. Focused on sustainable wellness—instead of quick fixes—he offers patients a customized blend of Western medicine with acupuncture, nutritional counseling, vitamins and herbs, relaxation techniques, physical therapy, and bodywork. In 2010, he developed Be Well by Dr. Frank Lipman, a line of leading-edge supplements and health programs. He is the author of Revive: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again, Total Renewal: 7 Key Steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health, the NY Times Bestseller, The New Health Rules and the upcoming 10 Reasons You Feel Old & Get Fat...

For more on Dr. Lipman, please visit his resourceful WEBSITE and follow him on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.

Image courtesy of stock.tookapic.com.

I love hearing how people put the Four Tendencies framework to work — whether by using knowledge of their Tendency to improve their own live or to work more effectively with other people.

Recently, I got an email from Nagina Abdullah, health coach and founder of MasalaBody.com. She listens to the “Happier” podcast, and she told me about how she was able to eat more healthfully, lose weight, and boost her energy by harnessing the strengths of her Rebel Tendency.

This story was particularly interesting to me, because — as Rebels themselves often point out — the strategies that work for other Tendencies often don’t work for Rebels.

So I was fascinated to hear her story, and she wrote an account of it to share — which is below, with my comments in brackets.

Nagina writes:

When I was a kid, I got sent to the principal’s office on a weekly basis. While my teachers would ask the students to be quiet and obedient, I would end up in laughing fits and get sent to the principals’ office to get disciplined.

I struggled with following expectations for my whole life. As a child, I resisted my teachers’ rules. As I got older, I resisted being healthier.

See, I love food. I love sweets, fried food, food trucks, BBQs – everything that isn’t good for my waistline. I ALSO resist following the rules of having to be strict to get healthy.

My tendencies finally made sense when I took Gretchen’s Four Tendencies Quiz. I wanted to see if I was an Upholder, Obliger, Questioner, or Rebel.

I wasn’t surprised when I scored as a “Rebel.” Rebels resist outer and inner expectations.

After decades of being addicted to sugar and feeling unable to control my cravings, I embraced my Rebel tendencies. As result, I lost 40 pounds, skyrocketed my energy and started wearing the clothes I had dreamed of wearing.

The “Healthy Rules” I Did Not Want to Follow

After having two kids and working 60+ hour weeks, I felt exhausted and overweight, more than ever before. I needed to get healthier to feel better and have more energy for my kids.

I didn’t want to deprive myself of food I loved and I didn’t have time to spend hours in the gym.

Here are the rules to getting healthier I would regularly hear:

“You have to count calories, points, crumbs, licks, and drops”
“You must exercise 3+ days a week”
“No eating cupcakes, donuts, and everything else you love”

Even though I wanted to get healthier, I resisted restrictive rules like these.

This led to a lot of internal frustration, yo-yo dieting, announcing “It isn’t worth it!” and “Why is this so hard for ME?” [Rebels often get frustrated when they try to use the same techniques that work for other Tendencies.]

Even if I wanted to be healthier, I couldn’t even follow my OWN rules. [Rebels resist outer and inner expectations.]

Would I ever change my habits to get healthier when I kept rebelling against the rules?

I finally got my dream body when (only when) I broke the rules.

Here’s how I broke the rules to lose 40 pounds and keep it off for now over six years.

Above All, I Wanted to Be a “Rebel Mom”

Being a mom is the greatest gift, but I feared I would be overweight, exhausted and put myself last in the name of my kids, which is the stereotype of a mom I held.

That’s when I decided to be a REBEL MOM and break through the stereotype.

Here’s my vision of being the mom I wanted to be:

Feel confident in a bathing suit so I could swim and play in the sand with my kids
Run 5k’s with my kids and set healthy examples for them
Feel sexy around my husband
Go rollerblading, biking, ice skating, roller skating, skiing, snowboarding and more with my family and feel strong and agile as I am doing it

Having a goal of a “Rebel Mom” inspired me to be healthier. [Rebels want to express their identity; they want to live in accordance with their authentic self; they can do anything they choose to do, in order to be the kind of person they choose to be.]

3 Rules I Broke to Get My Dream Body

I started by eating healthy, because I found that it is the most impactful thing to do. But I needed to make eating healthy enjoyable and realistic for my life and family, and that’s when I realized there were three rules I had to break. [Rebels do well to focus on enjoyment. They also often enjoy breaking rules or achieving aims in unconventional ways.]

Rule 1: “You need to eat healthy every day to lose weight.”

How I break Rule 1:

I have one “Cheat Day” a week where I eat everything I want, so I always get a “break” from the rules and have something to look forward to. A Cheat Day is KEY to losing weight if you hate following those strict diet rules. [As an Upholder and an Abstainer and a very low-carb eater, this would not work for me — but it works for Nagina.]

Rule 2: “You have to eat boring food in tiny portions so you feel like you are starving to lose even 5 pounds.”

How I break Rule 2:

Instead of making my food flavorful with heavy sauces and creams, I use spices and herbs that pack in the flavor and have natural health benefits (like anti-inflammation and reduced water retention). I feel like I’m “cheating” and indulging even though I’m actually eating healthy.

I love to add a pinch of cinnamon (lowers your blood sugar) in my morning coffee because it tastes so delicious. [Again, the focus on pleasure and choice.]

Rule 3: “You are “supposed” to eat healthy.”

How I break Rule 3:

Remember the last time you were at an airport? Temptations at every turn, with most people indulging in them? It’s HARDER to eat healthy than not!

As a result of eating healthy, I feel in control of myself, and feel like I’m rebelling against the “norms” of society. [Rebels often benefit from reminding themselves, “I’m not going to be trapped by a sugar addiction. These big companies can’t control me with their fancy marketing campaigns and crinkly packages. I’m strong, they can’t make me eat their junk.” Rebels also often love a challenge: “Most people can’t resist the goodies in an airport, mall, or store, but for me, it’s not a problem.”]

What you can do to get healthier:

If you resist outer and/or inner expectations (Rebels resist both, and Questioners and Obligers resist one or the other), and/or you have found it challenging to get healthier, try to BREAK some of the traditional rules by using one of the methods that worked for me:

What’s a stereotype you would break by getting healthier? Embrace that and make it your goal.
Include one cheat day a week and eat whatever you want on those days, while staying healthy on the other days. [Very effective for some people! Not effective for others! Know yourself.]
Add herbs and spices to your foods to make it taste indulgent without the extra calories.
Resist the unhealthy temptations around you and feel in control of yourself.

What I love about Nagina’s account is how carefully she examined what works for her, what she wants, and figured out her own way to get there.

By embracing her Rebel Tendency, she was able to get the benefit of its enormous strengths. By contrast, when Rebels think they “should” be able to use techniques like to-do lists, scheduling, monitoring, or accountability, they often get very frustrated with themselves.

There’s no one “right” way, no one “best” way — only what works for you.

Gretchen Rubin is the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Happiness Project—an account of the year she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier—and the recently released Happier at Home and Better Than Before. On her popular blog, The Happiness Project, she reports on her daily adventures in the pursuit of happiness. For more doses of happiness and other happenings, follow Gretchen on Facebook and Twitter.

Image courtesy of it’s me neosiam.

The post How a Health Coach Harnessed Her Rebel Tendency to Lose 40 Pounds and Boost Her Energy. appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

Of all the human qualities, compassion tends to take my breath away the most, in part because of the way in which it can transform the gravest of circumstances. Nowhere has this been more evident to me than with the recent flooding in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey, and then the devastating destruction of Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean and Florida. And though I wish I didn’t have so many examples here, there was also the 7.1 earthquake in Mexico City and then Hurricane Maria which devastated Puerto Rico and other Caribbean Islands like Turks and Caicos. Suddenly, the world became a kinder place, a place where people from different countries around the world stepped up to support the individuals and governments where the destruction took place. We, the people, came together.

As I watched the news coverage of Mexico City I saw all these people working together to remove debris and help find any person who might have been buried in rubble. This is a sight I remember all too well when the Twin Towers fell on 9/11. Brave individuals thrown into chaos, and yet somehow mustering the strength to lend a hand, helping one another in the most trying of times.

We have a tendency to do that, us humans. We’re kind of kind at heart. We’re givers. We take care of one another when push comes to shove. It seems some part of us recognized our innate connectivity during times of severe trauma, or life and death situations. Even people we might judge as monsters become angels during these severe times.

Nowhere did I see this shift in caring more, this seemingly automatic move to compassion, than here in the U.S. with the flooding in Houston. Here we were, the United States, in a loud and all-consuming conversation on divisiveness, and a complete polarization of people across our country based on conservative and liberal identities, when out of the blue, ocean that is, the worst flooding Houston has seen in years came to shore. This devastation immediately shifted us out of this “right-wrong” paradigm of a conversation into a place of deep compassion for all our brothers and sisters. Bam! Compassion for the win! Oh, wait, compassion isn’t out to win, but simply to express an energy of caring to any person who might be in pain because of their current circumstance. And we all stepped up and gave a care.

I know for myself, I wanted to do something. I was a bit shocked at first, but thanks to Facebook there was a link to give to relief funding for the victims of the flooding in Houston. I gave, as did many of my friends here in Los Angeles. I could tell, as there was an option on Facebook that somehow showed you gave when you shared the charity link on your Facebook page. Again, any liberal-conservative thing flew out the window because we were giving around the country. Those of us in LA weren’t saying, “Oh, it’s Texas, they’re more conservative, let’s not give to them.” We reached down into our pockets, and however deep they may have been, we gave, because we care for one another.

That whole experience almost makes me hopeful that we’ll eventually ensure all our citizens here in the U.S. have some form of health care. Maybe there’s a way to line item it under the 790 billion dollar budget for defense spending? I don’t know why no one’s thought of that yet. I mean without our health we’re literally nothing. Can’t defend a country without good health. But back to compassion, because let’s face it, it’s a much better topic to write about as everybody wins where compassion is concerned.

Compassion as a quality holds tremendous power. Not power like a stick of dynamite, or power as in a semi-automatic weapon, but rather authentic power like Gandhi expressed when through peaceful protest he freed an entire country, or power like Nelson Mandela, who also freed a nation despite the racism and prejudice of his imprisoners through choosing a peaceful and compassionate activism which would eventually free, not only himself, but his country from apartheid. At the core of Gandhi and Mandela’s approach, and countless other examples throughout the world, where individuals who understood the inherent power of compassion.

Compassion, what is it good for? Absolutely everything. Yeah, I know that sounds like a lyric from a song some of you older folk might remember. I like my version better replacing war with compassion – it’s good for everything. Yes, everything.

There isn’t anything compassion doesn’t make better. @barryaldenclark (Click to Tweet!)

Don’t believe me? Test it out. Be compassionate in the most challenging of situations. Practice compassion on yourself – you will feel a hell of a lot better afterward, I promise. And let’s be real here, the only way to get to Carnegie Hall is practice. It’s no different with compassion. You have to put this quality to use, breathe air into it, try it out, even on those individuals you think it impossible to shift your feelings towards – especially on them.

Let’s all go on a compassion adventure together, shall we? Oh, it’s not gonna be easy. No one ever said it would be, but I guarantee you it will be worth it. How you ask? Because compassion is the fastest way to the heart of pretty much any individual you might come in contact with or any tough situation, and you’ll leave a path of loving.

Birds will sing, rainbows will fill the sky, and smiles will be seen across the land. I’m not really exaggerating here. These and other wonderful things will occur when you express compassion. It will fill you and your heart, as well as the person’s heart receiving your loving, compassionate energy, and it can transform pretty much any challenging situation.

Compassion is a gesture that, like a rock in a pond, reverberates out into the world. Negativity sucks the life out of us, and God knows there’s an awful lot of it flying around right now. Compassion fuels our souls. My wish for all of us around this planet is to find the internal flame of compassion within ourselves and to share this with all those around us, regardless of what our mind judges the other person or people to be.

It’s a tall order, and one I know we’re built for as the recent hurricanes and earthquakes have proven to us. Compassion is at the heart of us all, and compassion is the one ingredient we find in the center of every storm which acts as a healing balm. It’s there as our gift of the heart and our seeds for healing. Shower life with your compassion, and watch the healing energy grow, erasing all devastation in its path. Ultimately, I believe compassion is the light of God. May loving compassion bless your life always, and in all ways. Now please excuse me, I’ve got a rainbow to catch.

Barry Alden Clark has coached thousands of individuals in connecting more deeply with their hearts, their life purpose, and helped create a pathway for these folks to move forward in a direction more aligned with who they truly are. He & his creative partner Eliza Swords are currently delivering uplifting content on social media every Wednesday via “Best Day Ever with Barry and Eliza”, a Facebook and You-Tube phenomenon reaching thousands of people around the world. They are also inspiring love and joy through creating heartfelt and entertaining content via their production company Pure Honey Ink. Currently they have projects in development for social media, film, television and publishing. You can reach Barry at www.barryaldenclark.com.

Image courtesy of Gerd Altmann.

The post Compassion in the Eye of the Storm appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

This is a letter I have just written to my adult daughter who is continually treated by the important people in her life as though she doesn’t matter.

I was up half the night thinking about you. There are some things you need to know about me…

When I was fifteen I fell in love with a girl at school. I was walking on the moon! Floating on air. I had never been so happy.

This lasted about two days until she told me that she just wanted to be my friend. Then she went out with my best mate instead so I had to see them together all the time with all the obvious pain that that entailed.

Two years later I fell in love with someone else. She only wanted to be my friend as well. And she also went off with my best friend.

I was by this time excruciatingly lonely and miserable. I was painfully shy and thought the only way to get close to girls was to become their friend. It was a rubbish technique for pulling girls because by the time I felt safe enough to tell them how much I liked them I was well and truly in the Friend Zone.

After two broken hearts I basically retreated into myself and tried to hide from the word the best I could. Mainly by getting drunk a lot. At this time of my life I was surrounded by people, but felt entirely alone and miserable.

When I was twenty-one I had my all time low, when I fell in love with a girl who was delightfully shy and totally alluring. Unfortunately for me she was a bit of a slut too. She went off with ALL of my friends! Of an entire pub full of ‘friends’, only one turned her down because of how I felt about her.

I was hanging around with all these people who just didn’t care that I was in love with this girl. She would tell me that we were exclusive, only to get off with one of my mates the next time she got drunk. Which was never more than a week or two away.

I would cry a lot and run and hide again. After a couple of weeks she would smile at me from across the room, I would forgive her and the cycle would begin again. The worst of it was that deep down I always knew she would do it again.

It went on like this for one long very painful year.

By this time my self-esteem was so low I didn’t even have the courage to walk away from all of them. I truly thought at that time that I didn’t have a choice. But eventually I finally came to my senses.

By that time I was totally devastated, my soul was destroyed and I was hurt beyond belief. I built huge psychological walls around myself and I trusted nobody. Those walls became so thick that I am still knocking them down today.

This kind of thing went on for years after this too. Nothing quite as bad as this one, but I could never trust anyone and my self-esteem had taken such a beating that I was always in the Friend Zone. Always lonely.

Finally in my late thirties or thereabouts I was sitting with about the eighth girl I was in love with who was telling me she just wanted to be my friend. This time it was one time too many!

I became unbelievably depressed. This girl, who happened to be the only friend I had at the time, (until I blew it by falling for her of course) dragged me to the doctors where I was prescribed Prozac.

I remember so well coming out of the doctors. I collapsed on the ground, against the wheel of my van in the surgery car park, and sobbed like a baby.

Three days later I felt a rather nice tingling sensation in my arms and I knew the Prozac was beginning to kick in. I didn’t like it though!

That day I realised two things.

I didn’t want to rely on anti-depressants. And,
I realised that if so many girls only wanted to be my friend, it must be because of something I am doing.

It wasn’t them – it was me!

A healing journey begins

I drove to the doctors and handed them my box of pills telling them I didn’t need them after all.

I was lucky in the fact that I lived alone on a narrow boat at the time so had plenty of privacy and space to begin exploring my inner most feelings in an attempt to get to the bottom of my issues.

I wish I could tell you that I had an amazing epiphany and all was immediately good again, but I can’t. My healing journey took a decade or more, gradually peeling away the lairs of pain one by one and healing them.

As I went through each healing moment my happiness and self-esteem grew. It was an exceptionally long, and often painful, journey. But life became a direct reflection of how much healing I had done – and continues to do so today.

The more of my issues I clear out, the easier and more fun life becomes. @TheVividCoach (Click to Tweet!)

Eventually, I brought myself to a place where I could sit down to lunch with a beautiful woman and, for the first time in my life, just enjoy her company without feeling a desperate need for her to want me.

That woman was your mum. We enjoyed each other so much we fell in love. She was the first woman in my life, since my mum, who loved me back…it had been a long time coming – I was forty-four!

Patterns

If we have a pattern that keeps repeating in our life, such as falling in love with girls who want to be our friend or the important people in our life treating us as though we don’t matter, it is a lesson for us to learn about ourselves.

The pattern will keep repeating itself until we recognise how WE are creating it!

I promised to give you a question but actually I have several for you to ponder. The art is not to quickly answer, “I don’t know”, but to soul search in the faith that you have the answer within you. Keep pondering until an answer comes.

If you are anything like me, each answer will create ten new questions at first. Spend time alone with a note pad and a bottle of wine and look for the answers. Cry when you need to, get angry if you want to, but find the answers and heal your stuff!

The more you allow yourself to create a life of pain, the more pain there will be to heal. So the quicker you get started the quicker and easier you will find it.

I was in my mid-forties before I could even sit down comfortably with a woman I was attracted to (can you believe that?) You are only twenty-six. It will be far quicker and easier for you – and you’ve got me to help, support and guide you too (if you want it).

As promised, here are some questions to get you started:

How am I allowing this to keep happening to me?
What needs to change in order for it to stop happening?
Which part of me needs this to happen in this way?
Which part of me needs to feel like this? Or thinks I deserve to feel like this?
When was the first time in my life that I felt like this? (this might be the beginning of the cycle)

Healing is the most painful and difficult thing we as humans can do. It is also the most liberating, life-enhancing and beautiful experience. It is hugely satisfying and beneficial.

In the end it just comes down to this though. Healing is merely recognising a subconscious part of yourself that wants something you consciously think you don’t want.

The hidden part is so much more powerful so keeps creating what you consciously think you don’t want – which is the cause of your continued suffering!!!

Inner conflict – two parts of you pulling you in different directions. Healing is essentially uncovering that hidden need and accepting that part of you with love, compassion and gentleness. All you have to do is notice. There is nothing else. The rest takes care of itself.

Why should you do it?

Because without it, your life will simply keep repeating the same old painful patterns over and over.

Because you are an amazing, beautiful, wonderful person and you deserve to feel love, hope, joy, happiness, fulfilment, peace, confidence and all the other wonderful feelings that life has to offer -all the time!

Because you deserve, as much as anyone, to have people in your life who treat you as well as your mum and I do. With respect, consideration, love, thoughtfulness, compassion, support and encouragement. Everyone should treat you like that, baby. Not just us!

Because you DO matter!

Because you are about to get pregnant and have a child. Everything you feel will be felt by your unborn child. All of your fear, all of your insecurities and all of your issues will be transmitted and programmed into your child in an amazing and powerful way.

Choose now that you will lead by example and become a POSITIVE influence in your child’s life. Start looking for the truth and happiness that lies buried inside of you.

I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that my letter hasn’t upset you and you can take it for what it is. A guiding light from a loving dad who hopes you can learn from his journey. I wasted three quarters of my life in loneliness, heartbreak, misery and pain before I woke up to the fact that it was all my own doing.

As easily as we all allow continuing pain and struggle in our lives, we can just as easily allow continuing love, abundance and fun. But we have to consciously choose it to be that way, or the default setting is shitsville!

It just takes a little effort and a lot of determination is all. But the effort is well worth it.

Love you

John x

John Freeman is the author of Vivid Visualisation, Success without Stress. He creates unique, personalised guided visualisation recordings that bring all the benefits of visualisation without the effort. Find out more at www.vividvisualisation.com.

Image courtesy of Negative Space.

The post Dear Daughter! appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

When we think of the word “love,” most of us think of images, symbols, and mythologies about romantic love from pop culture: fireworks bursting, flower petals falling—she loves me, she loves me not; lightning bolts striking the ground; birds chirping and the sun shining. All of these images carry with them a sense of the unattainable, the magical. Love becomes something we chase after, an object we wait for, a person onto whom we fixate our attention, an experience wholly out of our control.

I think we’ve all been vulnerable to disappointment when it comes to love. Maybe we have a rough patch in a relationship with a friend or significant other and find ourselves shocked by how much work needs to go into love. Maybe we see these challenges as “problems,” and interpret them as our fault, or perhaps even their fault. We may even find ourselves thinking love itself is a deceptive, dangerous illusion.

The Universal, Healing Power

Regardless of where we’ve ended up with these narratives, there is one bottom line: no matter where we come from, we can experience love more directly, more freely—without all the weight of cultural baggage.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we can immediately rid ourselves of the stories, fears, assumptions, and judgments about love we’ve picked up throughout our lives. But if we are able to accept that there is only one kind of love—what I call real love—and that we all can access it, no matter what we’ve been through or what we will go through, we open ourselves up to a capacity for connection that is healing, restorative, generative.

When we give and receive love from a place of presence, we can identify our histories, stories, traumas and deep-rooted beliefs with more clarity. We don’t fault ourselves, but can see these challenges for what they are. From there, we learn that no belief, thought, feeling or experience can actually block us from love. We take a stand for ourselves on our right to feel, give, receive, and be the embodiments of love.

What is Real Love, Really?

But what does all this actually feel like? When I first sought to write a book about love, I reached out to some of my students to talk about their experiences of love. What I found was that many of them understood the concept of real love, but weren’t sure how, practically, to experience it. As we talked, we worked together on naming some of the clichés about love that hold us back. As we identified them, we found that an empowering first step to real love was for each of us to become authors of new stories about love.

Real love doesn’t have to be earned.

One of the most common clichés about love we identified was the idea that love is something to be earned—like winning an award for a groundbreaking film, or making a six figure salary for a 10-hour workday. Yet the truth is, we all deserve love simply by virtue of being in this world. We may be conditioned to think otherwise during our childhoods or later on, but we can come back to this simple truth. It may not feel easy, but it moves us beyond the cliché into real love.

We all deserve love simply by virtue of being in this world. @SharonSalzberg (Click to Tweet!)

Real love is available to anyone.

Some students voiced concern over their notions of original sin—that some people are just born broken, and are incapable of love. In fact, I think most of us can relate to the idea of feeling that we are never good enough. We can, however, invite ourselves to see our lives as both deeply connected to—but incomparable to—the lives of others. When we recognize our own abilities, talents, and heartfelt desires, we can move beyond the realm of comparison and competition. And from there, we start to question what “enough” really means. That is another gateway toward real love.

Real love for ourselves is not a prerequisite.

I personally struggled with how to take on this overarching topic of self-love, tripped up by the myth “you have to love yourself first in order to love another.” Despite the popularity of this idea, I know so many people are able to love others even while remaining highly critical of themselves. That doesn’t mean their love for others isn’t authentic, but perhaps that it comes from a place of greater emptiness than it would if self-love were part of the picture. But this myth makes us see self-love as a means to an end, an easy box to check before we can move onto bigger and better types of love. And that’s simply not the case.

Loving ourselves, others, and even our experiences, is never as simple as a box to check. All forms of love are ongoing processes, journeys we embark upon—without a fixed end point. To me, real love comes down to how well we are willing to pay attention—how closely we can notice and participate in the opportunities we get each day to act lovingly, to accept ourselves and our lives as they are.

Sharon Salzberg is a central figure in the field of meditation, a world-renowned teacher and NY Times bestselling author. She has played a crucial role in bringing meditation and mindfulness practices to the West and into mainstream culture since 1974, when she first began teaching. She is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA and the author of ten books including NY Times bestseller, Real Happiness, her seminal work, Lovingkindness and her forthcoming release by Flatiron Books, Real Love. Renowned for her down-to-earth teaching style, Sharon offers a secular, modern approach to Buddhist teachings, making them instantly accessible. She is a regular columnist for On Being, a contributor to Huffington Post, and the host of her own podcast: The Metta Hour. For more information, visit www.SharonSalzberg.com.

Image courtesy of aliceabc0.

The post Beyond the Cliché: The Myths of Love and How to Debunk Them appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

The mind. It’s a beautiful and a cruel place to be, depending on the moment. (A.K.A.“brutiful.”)

The mind is part of what makes humans so amazing (Innovating! Creative! Unique!); it allows us to learn from our experiences, solve problems, plan for the future. We can use it to be self-reflective, self-evaluating, and bring awareness to how our “selves” affect other people.

But what about when it starts to suffocate us? What about when reflecting on our past becomes rumination (“I shouldn’t have done that…”) or planning for our future becomes worry? What happens when the same prefrontal cortex that allows us to analyze and act becomes the inhibitor of action…you know, analysis to paralysis?

These moments are symptomatic of an egoic mindset. Self-awareness and reflection can also mean self-focus, and too much focus on ourselves can eventually become harmful. An egoic state (which is a default mindset for most of us humans) can lead us to feeling separate, “less-than” others, and (when intensified) pretty darn insignificant and sad.

So how do we stop it? How do people who rely so fully on their minds get out of…their mind?

Well, here’s one way:

Just like there’s an egoic mindset, there are also hypo-egoic mindsets. (This is the opposite state: being disinterested in the self, less concerned with other’s opinions, present in the moment, feeling “apart” of the whole. You know, the good stuff.) These states are awesome because within them we can let go of our over-analyzing behavior, enjoy the people and the moments in our lives more freely, and just generally…be happier. (Which I think is the general goal, right?)

There’s one way that researchers in a lab have been able to produce hypo-egoic states by eliciting feelings of awe from participants.

Awe

You’ve probably heard the word awe before, and generally know what it means, but just to be specific: awe is a feeling that makes you step back and gasp at the beauty of it all. Awe is knowing that it’s a big world and you’re a part of it; it’s a hard-to-define-moment at which we’re captured by the complexity and power all around us. A starry night, towering redwoods, your child’s eyes…the experiences (different for all of us) that produce a feeling of being struck.

Being struck by what? A hypo-egoic mindset, apparently. In moments of awe, we lose track of ourselves.

It’s hard to be self-centered when we’re enamored with the world around us; we’re less likely to worry about the future or regret the past if we’re captured by the beauty of the Grand Canyon or holding our first born.

So yes, awe is great, but…let’s be honest. We can’t always be at the Grand Canyon. We can’t constantly be staring into the night sky contemplating the universe or walking along the beach.

What can we do to elicit a hypo-egoic mindset from ourselves?

We can put ourselves in the way of awe. We can reflect on times when we personally felt it, remember what it looked like and smelled like, what we noticed and how we felt. We can sit down and write about those moments, re-live them, make them real to us again.

Remember, this isn’t just nostalgia (which is great, but can lead to feelings of longing or sadness.) This is asking yourself what moments have made you do an inner curtsy to the universe, and diving into them. Setting aside five minutes to paint as clear a picture of that moment as possible.

The action of reflecting and writing about a time when we were overwhelmed with the vastness of a moment can itself bring about parts of that moment…as well as the feelings that went along with it. We don’t have to physically be on the beach or at that canyon; we just need to remember (in detail) what it felt like.

This awe-eliciting trick is one to put in your back pocket for a rainy day: or a sunny day, or a foggy day, or a Saturday, or…you get the picture.

Escaping an egoic mindset isn’t always necessary (if we didn’t focus on ourselves at all, how would be achieve our goals?) but it’s helpful to be aware of the ways in which our minds work for and against us.

A practice like this one is like a lasso for the runaway thoughts in our minds.

So, go ahead. Be in awe. Remember it, write about it, tell me about it in the comments. Reflecting on the powerful moments in life might just remind us of the beauty in the here and now.

Melissa Pennel is a coffee drinker, overthinker, and empowerment coach in Northern California. You can find more of her writing on her website, and follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

Image courtesy of freestockpro.com.

The post Use This Awe-Eliciting Trick to Put in Your Back Pocket for a Rainy Day appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

Over the past ten years, I’ve thought a lot about building a legacy. In particular, I’ve thought about it as it relates to a body of work that you produce and share over the years. This model has kept me going for a long time.

To me, one of the most attractive qualities of writing the blog, starting in 2008 and continuing until now (albeit in several distinct forms), was the idea that I was building a portfolio of sorts. I could write something today, and it would still be around tomorrow, next week, next year, and so on. It would, as I’ve said more than once, “go on to live a life of its own.”

But is that really true?

As I wrote waaaaay back in 2009 (WTF), nothing lasts forever. In my therapy sessions of late, and in my own reflection while traveling, I’ve been thinking more about the not-so-shocking revelation that everything eventually comes to an end.

And as I learn through experience and observation, I’m forced to concede that there are some holes to this model that I love so dearly.

One of the holes is that much of the work seems destined to be lost, sometimes immediately upon dissemination. It disappears into the void of content overwhelm. Some people do go back and discover earlier work, but there’s a real 80/20 rule (probably more like 98/2) to this. Very few people go back, and very little of the work lives to see the sunlight again… if it ever did at all.

Another hole is that some work becomes perennially popular—which is great, of course—but you can’t necessarily predict which work that will be. My second book, The $100 Startup, has sold 10 times the number of copies that my first book, The Art of Non-Conformity, has. I’m glad that people enjoyed it, but I don’t think it’s 10x better than the first one. I didn’t work 10x as hard on it, and I don’t believe in that book’s message 10x more.

I’m pretty sure there’s an element of luck to some of these things. And if it’s not luck, the point is that it’s outside one’s ability to influence, which means it might as well be luck.

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in the model of legacy work. I’m not quitting or going anywhere. I’m just as motivated as when I started, if not more. Perhaps I’m just less confident in my ability to predict and control it. So maybe it’s time to consider a new model.

Let’s call this new model the Etch-a-Sketch practice of making art. Remember those? You could sketch whatever you imagined in a sea of horizontal and vertical lines, but with a quick shake-shake-shake, it was gone. Aside from never using that Etch-a-Sketch again, which would of course render it useless, there’s no way to preserve the work.

So in this Etch-a-Sketch model, you still have to do your best every day. You put out the show, the post, the essay, the video… or whatever your form or medium. You still get the chance to reach people with it that day.

But then it disappears, never to be seen or experienced again, and you have to start over the next day. The only value is what you make of it today. When tomorrow comes, you have to deliver once more.

In this scenario, there are no archives. There is no body of work. There is only, well, today. This leads to an obvious question: what will you make with your one day of opportunity?

And if you don’t put it to good use, not to worry. Perhaps you’ll have another chance tomorrow, after today disappears into the void.

Chris Guillebeau is the New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness of Pursuit, The $100 Startup, and other books. During a lifetime of self-employment, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his 35th birthday. Every summer in Portland, Oregon he hosts the World Domination Summit, a gathering of creative, remarkable people. His new book, Born for This, will help you find the work you were meant to do. Connect with Chris on Twitter, on his blog, or at your choice of worldwide airline lounge.

Image courtesy of Spencer Selover.

The post What If All Your Work Disappeared at the End of the Day? appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

I’ve done a lot of “shadow work”. Shadow work meaning looking into the feelings, thoughts, and associations I made in the past that are giving me grief in my present. In other words, I took lots of time to look into why I felt so shitty for so long and how my past was related to that.

I went from being a victim and blaming other people, to feeling a victim and feeling inadequate, to feeling inadequate and being enormously mad at myself, to feeling a victim and feeling helpless. I can go on for a while but in the end, I let go of the victimhood, started to take responsibility for my own actions, forgave myself, looked at myself with love and started believing and trusting myself again.

I remember very vividly when being in the victimhood and looking into my past, how contracted, small and angry I felt. It felt like I didn’t have any choice at that time and it was so damn hard to choose for a point of view less angry and more empowering and forgiving. It felt like too big of a hurdle for me to take.

During those years I did transform my victim mentality but I did take the long route.

Now I believe it’s not necessary to dive into the past and relive experiences that caused you pain. I did and I kept reaffirming my victim mentality as well as other negative emotions. Instead of learning to look at those experiences with an empowering point of view, I kept affirming my negative one.

By doing this I kept myself away from the light – meaning being my True Self – longer than necessary.

So why does Shadow work keep you from the light?

(Nothing really does keep you from the light except choosing to do so. Shadow work in itself, therefore, doesn’t keep you from the light. But it can keep you away from the light longer than necessary)

Every experience doesn’t have any meaning in itself but the meaning you give it. This means it’s more beneficial to learn to change your point of view on these experiences.
How you view your experiences influences how you feel. So if you want to change how you feel NOW, change how you view your past NOW. If you do that, you change how you feel NOW. For that, you don’t need to go back and work through every negative experience in your life.
Shadow work can have the effect of keeping you identified with your limiting beliefs. In the end, it’s those limiting beliefs that make you feel shitty now and not your experiences in the past.
Bad things happened in the past and they don’t happen to you in the NOW. With Shadow work you keep reliving those past experiences and for your emotions and vibrations, it seems as if it’s happening NOW.

Why we keep doing Shadow work

For me it had a lot do with fear. I felt so small, inadequate, and lonely that I felt too scared to step into my own power. I didn’t think I had it in me. It felt less scary to stay in the past and try to “explain” and “rationalize” everyone’s actions in my experiences than to just shift my point of view.
I also held on too much to my limiting beliefs. I believed in lack of love, money, and possibilities so much I couldn’t believe something else was possible. My world was too small and too contracted to see that what I chose to believe is the exact opposite of what Life and I am about.
Being attached to my limiting beliefs at that time did have some kind of benefit. It if didn’t I would’ve chosen a different viewpoint. The benefit was that that option felt less scary and overwhelming. By choosing those options I chose the road with less intense fear emotions in the short run and for negativity, doubt, and fear as well on the long run.

When you dive within yourself and you dive into your so-called shadow parts, that hardly ever goes hand in hand with positive feelings. The theory is that because something doesn’t make you feel good, it gets buried in your unconscious parts of your mind. And from there it influences how you act and behave now.

Although it is true that beliefs, thoughts, and ideas that you’re not conscious of can influence how you behave now, it isn’t necessary to dive into negative stuff in your past.

By diving into that negativity you step into that negativity. By doing so, you’re lowering your vibration and with a lower vibration you don’t have access to higher vibration overviews and insights.

What I mean is, that when you unnecessarily look and step into “long lost shadow parts” of yourself and deliberately stepping into negative feelings, you’re depriving yourself of a higher perspective. When you feel grateful, forgiving and loving you have access to more insightful, more in-depth and more loving perspectives than when you feel mad, angry or frustrated.

So if you want to feel better now, and become conscious of unconscious beliefs and thoughts, you don’t have to look at your past.

Your present tells you everything. Because your present is a reflection of you before your present moment became your present moment. So looking at your present, you’re looking at your past. Your present is nothing but a reflection of your inner vibration. So your present reflects your past.

So instead of diving within and looking for your shadow parts in your past, look at your present and work with that. That’ll show you enough to uncover what’s unconscious.

Carmen Smallegange is a coach specialized in uncovering and transforming limiting beliefs. Using her own life lessons she shines a new and fresh light on negative experiences to empower others to do the same and to acknowledge and step into their own amazing potential. You can get her free workbook on how to transform your fears or follow her on Facebook.

Image courtesy of Maranatha Pizarras.

The post Why Shadow Work Keeps You Away from the Light appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

Alex Berenson had the dream job. But he was unhappy. And perhaps it even scarred him in some ways.

He switched it up. To his true dreams. To the dreams he had for himself since he was a child.

I want to do this.

First off, Alex has written 11 bestselling thriller novels. Alex knows how to get the reader to turn the page and ask, “What happens next?!”

This is an unbelievably hard skill.

But it’s not the most important skill when you are moving into your dream job.

I will tell you the most important skill. And Alex explains more clearly how he did it when we are in the podcast.

The most important skill is to have this weird sort of “active arrogance”.

Here’s the gap: The best in your profession have skills, experience, and they know how to sit down and DO something every day.

The beginners: they WANT to do something. They PLAN to do something. They SAY they will eventually do it. They THINK they have the skills they need.

But they never do it.

The ones who succeed. They have the arrogance to think they can just simply sit down and do it. Despite not having the skills. Despite being total amateurs. They simply sit down and DO IT.

By doing it, you LEARN the skills, you DO the job [a first novel in Alex’s case], and you get better.

DOING is the only way to succeed. Most people stop before this point. @jaltucher (Click to Tweet!)

Alex didn’t.

And thank god. Because his 11 bestsellers have been lifesavers for me. A way for me to dream. A way for me to escape.

Here’s how Alex did it:

Create your own universe

“In 2003 and 2004, I went to Iraq for the paper,” he said (he worked at The New York Times). “The war had ended, supposedly… we deposed Saddam. Most reporters go during the ‘active phase,’ so The Times said any cub reporter could put their hand up and go. So I put my hand up.”

Then he came back and realized he had stories. And John Wells was born. Alex has written 11 bestsellers. All page-turners. I wanted to know what made him start writing thrillers. I’ve always thought of writing fiction. I still wonder if that’s what’s next.

Here’s what he told me, “In my universe, nobody lies to me. They can lie to each other, they can even lie to themselves, they cannot lie to me.”

Some luck goes unnoticed

“Coming back to the states was a shock,” he said. “The wastefulness of this country really smacks you when you’ve been away for a while, certainly in a place like that.”

“What do you mean? What’s an example?”

“I think the example that struck me is the electrical grid.”

We take it for granted that the lights go on. And then use them like crazy. I live in NY. The lights are always on. It doesn’t matter what time. And I never think about it. “American is a place of abundance,” Alex said. “I guess that’s a good thing. It’s better to be rich than poor but realize that 80% of the world is never going to live in conditions anything like this. It really does just smack you in the face to realize how lucky we are and how little we realize that.”

Choose yourself

I asked Alex if he thinks we’re becoming complacent as a society. “Thats a real fear,” Alex said. There are two sides. One side is if you give people everything will they stop wanting to work? Will they say they have enough. And give up.

But then the other side is you work so hard and go nowhere. “The flip side of that is if you make the system so unfair that nobody believes hard work can get you ahead, they’re not going to work either.”

And I think that’s why work should be more than a paycheck. There has to be a vision. And following that vision is how you choose yourself.

Have a little arrogance

Alex said a lot of reporters want to write novels. He was one of them. But there’s something that separates those who write from those who don’t…

“I did something arrogant,” he said. “I wrote a novel.”

So I wondered if that’s part of the formula? Do all novelists have some arrogance to write something totally made up and think other people will want to read it?

“Of course,” Alex said. “Are you kidding? It’s the craziest endeavor. ‘I’m going to create this world with these fake people and I want you to believe they’re real. And I want to make them come alive for you.’”

Finding aspects of you

I’m curious about the characters. Like dreams, where do they come from? Is it a manifestation of yourself? Of people you know? And who leads the story? Is it the writer? Some writers say the characters are so strong psychologically that they lead the story.

Alex got his answer from his wife. She’s a psychiatrist. She says John Wells is a projection of Alex’s most idealized version of himself. “He’s strong, he’s very capable, he’s so tough. Women love him, men fear him, sheep want to be with him, ya know he’s tortured because he’s committed all this violence over the years, but he’s essentially a good guy.”

I wonder what it would be like to create my own universe and then ask a doctor to read into me. But I only know what I create if I start creating.

How do you survive?

His books are 400 pages each. And that’s before everything gets cut down and reformatted. He used to write before work. Now it’s his full time job.

“So how do you survive? How do you sit through it?”

“Writing the books is mentally painful,” he said. “I make the characters suffer. Because I’m suffering.”

Who’s your hero?

I wanted to know more about Alex’s hero. He could’ve made the everyman. But instead he chose a spy, someone who in danger. Maybe it’s a reflection of who we want to be. Someone with real freedom.

Alex said. “When you have nothing to lose, when you don’t care if you live or die, you have incredible freedom.”

Alex doesn’t have that freedom. He told me how he was almost kidnapped in Iraq. “People thought I was spy,” he said. ““I had a very close call. I mean everyone has a close call, but I had a very close call”

“What was your close call?”

“Ya know, I don’t like to talk about it.”

I couldn’t let this go. When someone comes on my podcast, I have one chance to ask them everything I want to know.

“Could we please talk about it?”

“I found a notebook that a Shia fighter kept… It was just a tiny green notebook. It was in the rubble of a building. And I took it.”

“They saw you pick it up?”

“No… I was dressed like a local. I had a goatee. I had my haircut shorter, but no one was going to be fooled into thinking I was Iraqi. No one who REALLY looked at me. And I didn’t speak arabic”

People got suspicious of him.

“The question was, ‘What are you doing? Why do you look like this? Why are you trying to pass… you’re not one of us. And once that happened, it just spiraled.”

“So you reached a point where you got scared,” I said.

“Oh, no no no no. It was much worse than that…”

Get stories

I wanted to know how Alex got back home. He was detained. And almost martyred.

These experiences lead to his novels. Now, he had stories to begin fueling the John Wells series.

Write everyday

People ask Alex how he gets his inspiration.

“I have a mortgage to pay and I have a contract. I can’t wait for inspiration.” He says he makes progress every day.

How do you get people to turn the page?

Alex turned the tables. He asked if I wrote a page-turner.

The answer’s no. I tried. I’ve tried for 20 years. He said one key is to let people read your work. I’ve never let anyone read my fiction. I want to know the beats.

We broke them down.

“I’m kind of the wrong person to ask about structure,” he said. “My books violate the normal structure of genre fiction.”

But I find this is true with all peak performers. They can’t explain how they do so well. It comes natural to them. So getting into the finer nuances takes effort.

I dug. And here’s what I found…

Finding structure

In the beginning, the main character is involved in something bad
Then he solves it
And he’s given a grace period of relief
Then he goes through something worse… Alex said, “You have to have a mission and within that mission there has to be sub-missions.”
It could get worse. “It depends,” Alex said. Sometime the main character gets help from somewhere else or a clue is revealed. Anything can happen.

The key to a great ending…

Eventually it ends… But here’s the key. You need a cool solve.

So I asked, “What’s a cool solve?” This is another great example of an expert knowing his craft better than the inner workings of that craft…

We went through a ton of examples. And finally landed on this:

You have to build. “For Wells, there’s always tensions. Your always asking, ‘How far will this go?’ You just got me to explain it better,” Alex said.

James Altucher is the author of the bestselling book Choose Yourself, editor at The Altucher Report and host of the popular podcast, The James Altucher Show, which takes you beyond business and entrepreneurship by exploring what it means to be human and achieve well-being in a world that is increasingly complicated. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

The post How to Write a Page-Turner appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

It feels interminable. Like you’ll never get out. Like it’s never…going…to…end. That’s the nature of hell. It’s not the pain that drives you insane, it’s the fear that the pain could go on and on.

The first thing to tell yourself when you’re in hell: This pain WILL end.

I find this works for most varieties of hell. Physical pain. Heart break. Mental torture. Long road trips when you’re forced to listen to sports talk radio.

You probably won’t believe it when you remind yourself that This pain WILL end. And you may have nine reasons why you’ll never “fully” get over it. (And maybe 4.5 of them could be legit.) But your exact coordinates in hell, that specific degree of pain, that particular agony — all that will shift.

Because life keeps moving forward, always toward healing.
The nature of hell (density + illusion) is constriction.
The nature of heaven (light + truth) is expansion — always upward, onward and inward at the same time.
LIFE LIVES EVERYWHERE.

Use this truth to catch your breath: This pain WILL end.

Declare. Breathe. Move. Forward. Toward the truth.

(PS…For real. The pain will end. You’re going to get through it.)

Danielle LaPorte is an invited member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100, a group who, in Oprah Winfrey’s words, “is uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters.” She is author of White Hot Truth: Clarity for keeping it real on your spiritual path—from one seeker to another. The Fire Starter Sessions, and The Desire Map: A Guide To Creating Goals With Soul—the book that has been translated into 8 languages, evolved into a yearly day planner system, a top 10 iTunes app, and an international workshop program with licensed facilitators in 15 countries.

Named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes, millions of visitors go to DanielleLaPorte.com every month for her daily #Truthbombs and what’s been called “the best place online for kickass spirituality.” A speaker, a poet, a painter, and a former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, Entrepreneur Magazine calls Danielle, “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” Her charities of choice are Eve Ensler’s VDay: a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and charity: water, setting out to bring safe drinking water to everyone in the world. She lives in Vancouver, BC with her favourite philosopher, her son. You can find her @daniellelaporte and just about everywhere on social media.

The post The First Step to Take When You’re in Hell appeared first on Positively Positive!!.

Whatever our circumstances in life, metaphors can give us clarity, meaning and stability. And so, like many other people diagnosed with cancer, I used to look at my life as a cancer journey. But at some point the metaphor started to work against me. I had outgrown it. What happened?

Cancer terminology raises passion and debate.

I used to talk and write a lot about ‘my cancer journey’. I still use the term in my writing, when I make general points. I have not yet come up with a better alternative.

Since my treatment for cancer I think a lot about my own identity: patient, survivor or thriver? Nothing feels intuitively ‘right for me’.

I do not want to be labeled or cut off. Yet, others’ perception of cancer and therefore of me can do exactly that. If I let it.

I never thought I would have so much in common with so many people around the world, and still feel so very separate and alone.

Now, some years after my cancer diagnosis and treatment in 2012/13, the language and metaphor which best sums up my position on my life with cancer is no longer the cancer journey.

I do not want to take control just of my cancer journey. I am in charge of my life.

I needed to reconnect with the life I had before my cancer diagnosis and feel more connected to the world (and my world) beyond cancer.

There was a time when the cancer journey metaphor helped me a lot.

The term ‘cancer journey’ provided a meaningful frame for my experience, which was so dark and nebulous, that I almost lost track of everything including my sense of self.

I could look at stages of the journey, crossroads, milestones, resting places, one way streets, people who would join me on my journey or abandon me on the way etc etc etc.

The metaphor gave me some direction and a foundation.

I was on a journey, literally ticking off the days of my treatment, never knowing how many days I may have left to tick off.

While I no longer ‘tick the days off’, it feels I am ‘adding them on’. For how long – I don’t know.

I try to feel grateful for what I have now, without feeling too much cancer anger or remission guilt. But the fear of what may lie ahead, or may be happening in my body right now, that remains. No doubt about it.

My cancer is not your cancer.

Since my diagnosis I have had plenty of time to experience and think about my own cancer journey, which is as individual to me as it is to others.

You and I, we are unique, with or without cancer.

So much of our experience can vary like:

whether you are the one with cancer, a relative or friend;
the type of cancer, grade, stage;
the kind of treatment available;
treatment short or long-term side effects;
other support we get, or not;
friends or family who may stay or leave;
life changes we may have to make;
financial, social and employment status we may lose;
religious, spiritual or existential crisis we may have;
remission and survival rates;
the length and quality of life we may have left;
how we choose to talk about it all;
how we cope with it all;
and the language we choose and feel comfortable with.

If you are affected by cancer, including family and friends, you know the experience will change you.

My life is not what it used to be. While I am left with several side effects of the cancer treatment, I am better off than others. I am told I am in remission (with no noticeable signs of cancer). For how long, I do not know. Whether I will die of cancer, or not, I do not know.

Life has always been uncertain. With a life changing illness like cancer it feels I have been moved up the queue. A friend of mine who suffered a stroke in his early 50s feels the same. Whether that is a reality, I do not know. Other people have been diagnosed after me and have died before me.

Sometimes, I hear myself talk and think and read my words, and I feel guilty, and self-endulging, and pompous.

Sometimes, a part of me, does not want to hear or talk about any of this at all.

The experience of any traumatic life-changing event can affect us in at least three ways.

1. We end up emotionally paralysed by fear and lack of hope.

2. We (eventually) feel motivated to take charge and become an active player in the life we have.

3. We hover on a spectrum between the two. That is where I find myself a lot.

None of this is about “getting it right or wrong”. I always believe, we do the best we can, and that can change over time.

For me, every day is a cancer day. Does that make me morbid? Certainly not. I am a realist.

There is no single day, that I do not wonder about what may be around the corner, because of cancer, and what may never be around the corner, because of cancer.

A cancer day often has undertones of cancer grief for the life we have had and the life we will never have. And that is why I need my day to be about more than just cancer.

My cancer experience influences the decisions I make for my life, now.

I try to be rational and not let fear get the better of me. With little support from the hospital now it is left to me to monitor my health. I have been told what symptoms to expect, should the cancer come back. My thinking, rightly or wrongly, is that by then it might be too late.

A recent check up after I had been worried about some changes in my body confirmed my resolve: I cannot wait for the future, I need to grab life now.

Neither my body nor my mind or spirit are ‘just’ about caner.

So much else can happen and change, especially as I get older. I need to keep cancer, my abilities and my wellbeing in perspective.

How can I help myself?

How can I be one or several steps ahead of the game?

Advice and recommendations are never ending. Navigating it all can be exhausting and frustrating. Over the years I have cobbled together my own strategy of things I do and things I avoid.

Overall what is helping me most, now, is the decision to take control of my life, which is more vast and meaningful than a narrowed down version of a cancer journey.

The benefit? I feel more at peace and calmer in myself. I feel less stressed and more grounded.

If I am in re-mission, then it is my mission to play an active role in the life I have – not as a survivor or thriver, but as me.

I needed to progress beyond those labels, which had an important and reassuring meaning for me at some stage of my cancer experience. But I have outgrown their usefulness.

Cancer has influenced me, but I do not want to be defined by it. @KarinSieger (Click to Tweet!)

Self-care has become non-negotiable.

I guard my physical, mental and spiritual health with my life, literally, as they are the pillars of the life I have.

Even with cancer, our life is not ‘just’ about cancer. Our life remains about ‘us’.

What if?

Often I think about how I might feel, if / when the cancer comes back. Will my world and my vocabulary change again and become smaller?

Will I need and want to settle back into the cancer journey?

I do not know. I really do not know. And even if I did, that would be ok, too. Yes?

What language and metaphors do you find helpful, or not, to describe whatever you may go through in your life? Have you noticed a change? Do you need a change?

Karin Sieger is a psychotherapist and writer based in London, UK. Central to her work is the belief that we all have an intuitive wisdom for self development and emotional healing. Making and living in peace with our self is core to living well and coping with personal crises. Karin is particularly interested in anxiety, loss, transitions and the emotional impact of chronic or life-shortening illnesses like cancer, for which she has been treated herself. Karin posts regularly on her website KarinSieger.com. You can sign up for her Newsletter, follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

Image courtesy of iiii iiii.