Category Archives: All Posts—newest first

When life seems too demanding…

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It’s easy to feel stuck or overwhelmed by the demands of modern life. It’s not a constructive state of mind. It can lead to stress and anxiety.

Daniel Friedland MD is a high-performance leadership trainer. In this video he shares tips on how to shift your mindset so you can accomplish what seems overwhelming. The key is to turn stress into challenge. This shift in viewpoint leads to a different energy toward what needs to be accomplished, resulting in a greater sense of control and a more productive outcome.

It applies to demands in any setting, for people at all stages and in any role in life. When the shift is made, it’s like a weight being lifted—you feel lighter, with a sense of breathing space. Then you can tackle the challenge with enthusiasm rather than dread.

His two key tips Continue reading →

What if…memories are passed through DNA?

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Apparently it is true. Your genes could have been altered even before your mother was born.

In December of 2013, there was a flurry of media activity reporting on a study published in Nature Neuroscience. Richard Gray, Science Correspondent for The Telegraph, describes the essence of the study:

Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, found that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences–in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom–to subsequent generations. The results may help to explain why people suffer from seemingly irrational phobias–it may be based on the inherited experiences of their ancestors.

James Gallagher, Health and science reporter, at BBC News discusses implications: Continue reading →

Ask a better question.

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Shann Nix Jones unexpectedly found herself married to a farmer, living on a Welsh farm, raising goats, and producing kefir. When her husband had major surgery, he came home from hospital with MRSA, an antibiotic-resistent condition. In Wales, MRSA patients are not allowed back into the hospital because of its life-threatening nature. The doctor who made house calls had no treatment to offer either. Continue reading →

Disrupting Old Patterns

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A sidewalk disrupted

Being a person with eclectic interests and viewpoints, it’s always been challenging for me to decide what my focus is. What am I really about? What is my work?

It came to me recently that my work has always been about disrupting old patterns. Patterns of eating, patterns of belief, patterns of activity, patterns of thinking.

So I guess I now have an answer when people ask me the inevitable question, “What do you do?”

I’m a pattern disruptor. In that vein, here are a couple of disruptive videos… Continue reading →

Change your mindset, change the game.

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Beliefs can be changed

The psychological and physiological effects of anything in our lives can be influenced by our mindset. That means what you think can change your body’s response.

For example, if you think stress is bad for you, your body will respond accordingly. Continue reading →

Security or Expansion?

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Humans are wired to seek security.  It’s how we survived, individually and as a species. It’s in our genes.

Seeking security leads us to entrench in the familiar, which includes the way we do things and how we think. We become “set in our ways.” We forget how to venture out and explore. We develop a fixed mindset.

That’s the contracted state I found myself in a couple years ago. I had the security of familiarity. But I wasn’t very happy. Truly, I was bored with myself. Continue reading →

A year has passed!

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I started posting weekly blogs on my birthday a year ago. Since I’m the leading edge of the Baby Boom, and am now a year older, aging seemed a good topic for today.

But first, a video of my absolute-favourite song about getting old. When I first heard it, I couldn’t imagine being 64. When I got there, I made sure to listen to this song on my birthday. Today, I’m happy to share it with you. And if you want the lyrics to belt it out with them… Continue reading →

What kept me going?

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There have been parts of the last 15 years that were neither easy nor fun. People sometimes ask what kept me going. That is something I have wondered myself. I’ve distilled it down to innate optimism, a strong connection with my inner knowing, and an intense sense of purpose. I was born with all of them, and have consciously cultivated them over the years.

A healthy streak of optimism…

Optimism is hopefulness and confidence about the future. You might think of it in terms of the glass half empty/glass half full metaphor. When optimism becomes extreme, it falls off the edge into being Pollyannaish. Continue reading →

Integrative Medicine

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When Pamela Wible MD held a meeting to find out what would create an ideal medical experience for patients in her town, she discovered they wanted an integrative approach to their medical care. What exactly is that? And why would they want it?

What is integrative medicine?

Continue reading →

Build a new model for achieving health? There is hope.

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Just who is fixing the healthcare system? That’s the question I asked at the end of last week’s blog when I discussed having empathy for our doctors, who must work in a broken system.

So, who is trying to make it better? Apparently not our governments who, despite sometimes-good intentions, become bogged down in bureaucracy. And not conventional medical channels, through which it takes 17 years for new information to make it into clinical practice.

Patients?

In a limited way, we can contribute to making things better by keeping ourselves as healthy as possible so as not to over-use the system. We don’t have to ask permission or medical sanction to eat fresh food, plant a garden, think differently about our stress, take probiotics, get a pet, meet new people, move our bodies, improve the quality of our sleep, and be of service to others.

Doctors?

Continue reading →