by admin on July 27, 2010
I have a friend, whom I have never met. He is a young man in (where are you from Henrik?) Oh, yes, Henrik lives in Sweden.
He is 30 years old going on “Wise” man and he has spent (how many Henrik?)
oh, yes, 5 years training himself in the power of Positive Thinking. We can all learn something from Henrik! What you ask? Well, here is what he has accomplished - in his own words:
- Switched from a generally pretty negative attitude to a much more positive one.
- Lost 26 pounds during 4 months in the winter/spring of 2009. I did it by using a program called Turbulence Training, check out the review here.
- Become a lot more present. I used to live a lot of my life in my head, in the past and in the future. Today I spend a lot more time living it in the present moment. It’s a wonderful thing.
- I have become a less shy and more confident person.
- I get things done. I used to be a real procrastinating slacker that never got much done. My effectiveness and productivity have shot up quite a bit since then (although I certainly still have room for improvement).
- I have created a highly successful blog. This blog has – in July of 2010 – 32000+ subscribers via email and RSS and hundreds of thousands of visitors each month. How did I do it? How to Build a Somewhat Successful Blog: 16 Lessons I Have Learned has a lot of answers.
Henrik is a man with a mission. I have never actually met him, but his blog is filled with interesting lessons and lovely positive thoughts. His picture is perfect for what he advocates.
So it was terrific tonight when I got home and got a message from Henrik. My day had not been stellar! It was one of those days when my computer wouldn’t do anything I asked of it, and although I was all set up for my favorite client, she came in and asked for other things which I could not bring up on my computer immediately, which made me feel the fool and a tad inept when she found a spelling error in the very first title page.
Geez, I felt completely disheartened after trying a number of times to burn a DVD of my work for my client, only to send her home with a DVD with “Nothing” on it. Duh!
Knowing this, I spent another 2 hours trying to burn a “corrected” version of the DVD. To No Avail! Sorry, the computer said, No Can Do because the original can’t be found. What?!!! It’s a Movie! You Can Burn a Movie, said I…but no.
Then, I opened my g-mail and Henrik sent me this:
“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
Jim Goodwin
“For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.”
Lily Tomlin
Stress sucks. It sucks joy and the life out of you.
1. Accept the situation.
2. Take everything less seriously.
3. Decrease or put a stop to negative relationships.
4. Just move slower.
5. Exercise. (No Duh!)
6. Find five things you can be grateful for right now.(This is amazing because it works like a charm)
7. Look for solutions.
8. Be early.
9. Do just one thing at a time.
10. Talk to people around you about it.
Thank you Henrik! My day changed tremendously!
by admin on April 1, 2010
When my girls were little, every once in a while they got up on “the wrong side of the bed”. Which means, they were cranky, impatient, sleepy little girls. Now me, I rarely get up on the wrong side of the bed. Usually I wake up and I’m awake! Not my girls, nooooooo sireee! In fact, I don’t believe they really woke up till ten o’clock in the morning, but lucky for me I had a magic spell to change their attitudes! 
Endorphins! Endorphins are neurotransmitters that live in the brain and they have pain-relieving properties. There are pain killing drugs like morphine and codeine that act like endorphins.
A natural way to increase your endorphin production is through prolonged exercise, that’s why they call it “runners high”.
Another and easier way to make endorphins is to smile. That is it. The secret. Right there. Just smile!
On the way to school I used to tell my daughters, after I was tired of the complaining and bad moods, “Okay kids, it’s time to endorphin your face! Smile, begin now and do not stop till we get to school”
Silly but it worked!
It was silly, it felt silly, but I was totally serious because I know that another way to produce natural endorphins in the body is to smile. Yes! Smile though your heart is breaking and you will build up your endorphin levels which will make you feel better.
Remember the pain-relieving properties? Well, endorphins are also believed to be connected to euphoric feelings (and the release of sex hormones, but that’s not what I was going for). So by the time we got to school my kids were….well not euphoric, but happier than they were when the got in the car.
images-1Don’t believe it! Well I lengthened their lives too!
I can just hear some of you saying…guess what, they were smiling just because they were sooo glad to get out of the car! Okay, I can grant you that, but I can also tell you I probably helped them live longer too!
As it turns out, researchers from Wayne State University in Michigan found out that the bigger the grin and the deeper creases around yours eyes the longer you are likely to live! The study was led by Ernest Abel and published in Psychological Science.
Ernie and his crew studied 230 photographs of US Major League baseball players who began their careers before 1950. They grouped the players into “partial smile”, “no smile”, and “full smile” that’s when the eyes and mouth, the whole face is smiling.
The pictures were taken from the 1952 baseball register - information included was body mass index, birth, career length, marital status which indicated physical fitness. As of June 1st of 2009 those in the ‘no smile’ category lived for an average of 72.9 years; those with partial smiles- (just the mouth smiling) died at average age 75, but the grinning wild looking full face smiley guys died at rhe ripe old age of 79.9.
Now, there are a number of questions that come to my head in this study, like, did the cameraman instruct them to “say cheese” and some did and some thought “nah” or were some just shy and didn’t want to smile.
Nevertheless, we know you can make endorphins by simply smiling, we know they cause euphoria, and I know my girls are going to live a long life.
Wonder what a wink and a smile can do?
OMG, Sarah Palin is going to be around for a long long time!!!!
by admin on January 12, 2010
Mindful Fitness
by admin on July 31, 2009
I was watching the news, which reminded me of the beginning of a Beatles song: “I heard the news today… oh boy..”
…and I was thinking about how we don’t consider what we consume in thoughts. Right – thoughts. We consider our diets and what is good for us, we consider our fitness and how much exercise we are getting, (well, some of us do) but do we consider our daily diet of idea intake?
Consider this, how many negative messages are in your daily life? Do you really need to know about the tragedy that happened in the news, in your favorite soap opera, in the lives of the “rich and famous”?
Is your intake of negative thoughts and ideas permeating the way you look at life in general? Is it making you fearful, skeptical, or simply anxious?
We are constantly bombarded by messages that we consume without any thought of how they will affect us. So, I’m suggesting we start being more aware how many outside negative thoughts fill our lives. I’ve often written about being observers of our own thoughts, but have you considered the ideas and thoughts we are consuming everyday, without ever being aware of them.
Do you have friends that complain about their lives on a regular basis? Do you watch too many negative programs? All of these things affect our emotions and our outlook.
So let’s take a little assessment of our diet of thoughts and ideas and just be aware of what we are accepting into our minds. And then we need to accept that we don’t have to accept them.
We can hit the delete button, we can decide on how much news and what news we want to hear, and we can cut out toxic relationships that don’t help us maintain a balanced approach to life.
It’s up to you, you have the ultimate control on what ideas and thoughts you want to be exposed to.
Balance presents itself in all kinds of ways, food, thoughts, and exercise. We really are sentries for our own lives. We can decide who or what gets in and what stays out. So remember to say- Who goes there? Be in charge of the messages that enter your mind.
by admin on July 16, 2009
I don’t know about you - honest, I don’t! - but when I was growing up summers were long, languid affairs. You spent a lot of time just hanging out, doing nothing. It was a time to play soccer with your mates, make up games of your own, and sometimes just hang around staring at the sky.
I didn’t appreciate it then but it was a time to just be, not to think about the future or the past, to simply enjoy the present.
But once you get out of childhood, college and work and family mean the luxury of laziness is not an option. You have to work or when you do take vacation you are too busy trying to cram as much in as possible to really just stop and relax. {continue reading}
by admin on March 31, 2009
I have a friend who has just undergone a mastectomy. She has cancer. She recently came to a party we were throwing. Okay, it was our wedding. I was afraid she would not be able to attend because she was going to have her first chemotherapy treatment the day before the wedding, but she came and had a great time.
In fact, she really had a better than great time. She had a radiant-hippie-free-love of a time! {continue reading}
by admin on March 30, 2009
Last fall Kevin and I went to Yosemite. We love living in San Francisco, but it is really nice to take some time to get away from our daily lives of work and urban living and just be in awe of natural surroundings.
I love the quiet of the forest, the sound of the birds and russle of the wind through the trees. I enjoy my life in the city, but it’s so nice to go somewhere without having to have quarters for a parking meter or wonder if your car is parked on the wrong side of the street on street cleaning day. {continue reading}
by admin on March 19, 2009
Every time I go to the gym I’m amazed at the sheer variety of different exercises you can do to work out each part of your body. It seems that for each muscle there are a dozen different ways of working it to make it stronger.
That’s good, because variety can help you avoid becoming bored with your workout routine. It’s also useful because if you keep doing the same thing over and over again the benefits are not as great as if you keep trying new things.
That raised a question in my mind. If you can make your physical body better, more efficient and stronger by doing a variety of exercises, can you train and strengthen other things, like memory?
{continue reading}
