Dismiss What Insults Your Soul

Hunger

"There is more hunger for love and appreciation
in this world than for bread."

Mother Teresa

Conflict As Growth

Instead of seeing conflict as a threat to a relationship, what if we reframed this and saw conflict as an opportunity and a sign of growth in a relationship?
This requires understanding that conflict will inevitably occur in a close relationship.
The only way of getting around it is to not share your opinion at all, which is not healthy.

Trans Fat and Depression

Switching to olive oil may help protect against the mental illness.
Is there anything more depressing than a diet loaded with trans fat and saturated fat? One study doesn’t think so. According to research in the journal PLoS ONE, people who eat the most trans fat and saturated fat have a 48 percent higher risk of suffering from depression, compared to people who steer clear of those fats. The more trans fat they consumed, the more likely they were to be depressed. People who consumed olive oil, on the other hand, had a much lower risk of depression. Of course, I feel it’s only responsible to point out that depressed people could just have a penchant for foods that contain saturated or trans fat. However, other recent studies have found that Mediterranean diets and fish oil are both linked to a reduced risk of depression. Regardless, choosing heart-healthy oils like fish, flaxseed, walnut and olive over butter, shortening and cream will certainly make your heart happier.

BE

Perception and Empowerment

Every situation and scene in front of us has so many possibilities in terms of how we perceive and interpret. For example, if someone is 10% selfish and 90% generous what should we focus on, what should we perceive first within them? Most of us are now well trained to perceive and focus on the negative, the selfishness in others, and to follow it quickly with accusation and judgement.

We forget that what we perceive is what we empower within another and, more importantly what we perceive is what we empower within ourselves in that moment. And what we choose to see is usually what we get.

Patience

“Patience is passion tamed.”

Lyman Abbott

Diligence

Most people have noticed that it’s hard to lose weight, but easy to gain it. This is a relic of harder times, when food was not as abundant as it is today. Our genetic taste buds made energy-dense food desirable because it was necessary to pack away calories so we could make it through the thin times. We feasted when we could, in preparation for the famine.
But now that we live in a time of abundance, that system predisposes many of us for weight gain and retention. And for obese dieters, this system is even harder to overcome; after weight loss, they become better at using fuel and storing fat, making it harder to keep weight off. However, this isn’t to say that many haven’t lost weight and kept it off successfully.
It just means you have to be diligent.

Never

NOW

If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you,

that moment is now.

Curiosity

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors,
and doing new things, because we're curious
and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

Walt Disney

"The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

Albert Einstein

Exercise and Depression

Exercise is a bona fide mood booster for people with or without depression. If you’re down in the dumps, try climbing out by breaking a sweat. A four-year study, the results of which were published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found that depressed patients who do not find relief from their medication could improve, or even go into remission, by adding in daily aerobic exercise.
After 12 weeks of daily sweat sessions, 30 percent of the depressed volunteers (who had been depressed for an average of seven years) achieved full remission, while another 20 percent showed significant improvement.
For men, vigorous exercise worked better than moderate levels. For women, moderate exercise, like a brisk walk, was more effective when they had a family history of mental illness. Those without fared better with higher-intensity activities.

This Moment

The Real Measure Of Wealth

“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.”

Unknown

Healthy Detachment-Part Three

When we refrain from offering advice and ways to ‘fix’ things,

but truly listen to someone else,

we are practicing healthy detachment.

Fortitude

All in the dark we grope along,
And if we go amiss
We learn at least which path is wrong,
And there is gain in this.
We do not always win the race
By only running right;
We have to tread the mountain's base
Before we reach its height.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Beautiful

Light

"Kindness is the light that dissolves
all walls between souls, families, and nations. "

Paramahansa Yogananda

Serenity

Your serenity is based on taking responsibility without taking blame,and letting go without giving up.

High Intensity Beats Longevity

High-intensity exercise beats long workouts for longevity.
Slow and steady doesn’t always win the race. Research presented at the annual European Society of Cardiology meeting found that workout intensity may trump duration when it comes to living a longer life.
Cyclists who pedaled vigorously outlived those who rode for longer but at a lower intensity. Getting your heart rate up builds cardiovascular fitness. But that doesn’t mean you have to go for an all-out sprint; even a brisk walk can get most people’s hearts pumping. Those in great shape, however, may need to push themselves harder. The key is to keep challenging yourself. If your workout feels easy, it’s time to up the intensity. If you can sing or yell while walking or running, pick up the pace. Don’t overdo it, though. You should still be able to carry on a conversation comfortably.

No DOGMA!

Greed

"It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more,
that is poor."

Seneca

Enlist a friend

Find someone to be your exercise buddy.
Don’t choose just anyone: Pick someone who is full of energy, fun and who you look forward to spending time with.
That way, you’ll want to exercise just to be with your friend. Look for someone who’s more committed than you, so they can keep you motivated.

A Good Life

A good life is when you assume nothing,
do more,
need less,
smile often,
and realize how fortunate you are right now.

Healthy Detachment-Part Two

When we are able to remain in a place of joy or satisfaction while being in the presence of someone who is in a negative place,
we are practicing healthy detachment.

Sleep Deprivation and Illness

Too little sleep has been linked with several illnesses. And now a new study shows that quality of sleep can affect your blood pressure.
Most studies focusing on sleep look at quantity of sleep. But a new study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School and published in the journal Hypertension is one of the first to look at quality of sleep, and its effects on health. The findings show that the quality of your nighttime snooze can affect your risk for high blood pressure.
The study looked specifically at the slow-wave stages of sleep, which represent the deepest hours of sleep. During slow-wave sleep, your brain’s electrical activity and heart rate slow down, and your adrenaline levels and blood pressure decrease. This nightly fall in blood pressure is a good thing, according to the researchers, and not having it may directly influence daytime blood pressure.
While the study used only male participants, Dr. Susan Redline, an author of the study, believes the results would also apply to people who fail to get enough deep sleep.

How can you know if you’re getting the slow-wave sleep you need? If you wake after seven or eight hours of sleep feeling tired and fuzzy headed, that may be a sign that you need more deep sleep. To improve your quality of sleep, try these tips:
• Avoid alcohol, which is known to suppress deep sleep, within four hours of bedtime. Alcohol may make you feel drowsy at first, but once it wears off, it leads to rebound arousal and insomnia.
• Keep your bedroom cool, dark and, most importantly, noise-free.
• Exercise during the day (studies show that being more physically active can increase the amount of time you spend in deep sleep at night) but not within three hours of bedtime.
• If you snore loudly or others notice you gasping for breath while sleeping, see your doctor or a sleep specialist for help. These symptoms (yours or someone else’s) can interrupt deep sleep.

Thinking For Ourselves

Something Wonderful

If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention,
you’ll often find that you’re right.

Healthy Detachment-Part One

When we let go of our expectations of others and do not try to make them fulfill our own wants/needs,
we are practicing healthy detachment.

Olive Oil

Want to whittle your stroke risk by 41 percent? Use olive oil for cooking, salad dressings and bread.
Cut your risk of stroke by making olive oil your first choice in the kitchen. If you’re still using butter, margarine, shortening or corn oil for bread and cooking, making the switch to extra-virgin olive oil could slash your chance of stroke by 41 percent.
The study, published in the journal Neurology, found that using liberal amounts of olive oil in place of other, not-so-healthful oils and fats dramatically protected against brain attacks in people over the age of 65. Nearly three-quarters of all strokes occur in people over the age of 65 — and your risk more than doubles each decade after the age of 55.
Olive oil isn’t the only heart-healthy oil that appears to offer protection. A diet rich in omega-3s, found in fish, has been shown to reduce the severity of stroke in experimental animals. While we do not know if this is the case in humans, there are lots of good reasons to take in these heart-healthy oils. Just remember that all fats — even the heart-healthy kind — are high in calories. Just one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil weighs in at 120 calories.

Be LOVE

Heart and Intuition

"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition -
they somehow already know what you truly want to become. "

Steve Jobs

Negative Feedback

When you receive negative feedback, remember, it doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it, it matters how many do.

Laughter As Medicine

Feeling achy? Numb your pain naturally with a good laugh. Deep belly laughs (as opposed to polite giggles) can dull pain and stress.
Chronic pain got you down? Make a date with a funny friend, rent a sidesplitting movie or go see some stand-up at your local comedy club. Laughing can help take the edge off your discomfort. But polite titters won’t cut it. To get the soothing benefits, your laugh should be hearty and unrestrained. And the longer you laugh, the higher your pain tolerance.
Researchers found that cracking up for just 15 minutes decreased distress by 10 percent. The reason: Laughing releases endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that give you a buzz during exercise.
Not only do the brain chemicals boost mood, they also bust pain. Consider them your body’s natural source of morphine. That’s why exercise can also be a great remedy for people who suffer from chronic pain. Find a workout buddy who makes you howl and you’ve got yourself a double-whammy weapon against pain.

Absolutely FREE

Making A Change

“You make a change for two reasons:

Either you learn enough that you want to,

or you’ve been hurt enough that you have to.”

Dr. W. Crew Lauterbach

Sometimes

Sometimes you just have to do your own thing
your own way,
no matter what anyone else thinks or says about you.

Fructose Dangers-Part 3

The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout.

Fooled

The "Disease To Please"

"I don't know the key to success,
but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."

Bill Cosby

Attraction

Good looks attracts the eyes.

Personality attracts the heart.

Fructose Dangers-Part 2

Fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn free fatty acids (FFAs) into triglycerides that get stored as fat.
The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store.
Glucose does not do this.
When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat.
120 calories of fructose, however, results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!

"NO"

A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.

Gandhi

Beautiful

Trying to be somebody you’re not is not sexy.

Be you.

That’s when you’re beautiful.

Pushing Harder

Gabbing your way through your workout? If you want to improve your fitness level, you may have to push a little harder.
Walking is a great way to stay fit, but to reap the cardiovascular benefits, you have to make sure you’re moving at a brisk enough pace. Here’s an easy way to gauge how hard you’re working: Try holding a conversation.
Researchers have found that people who can talk comfortably during exercise are likely working out in a zone that’s appropriate for beginners and general health. Heather Nettle, MA, an exercise physiologist, explains it this way: You should be able to maintain a conversation, but singing or arguing would leave you breathless.
For people who are already in shape, or who want to push their fitness level further, you’ll need to step it up a notch, to where talking becomes difficult. Another way to think about it, says Nettle: On a scale of 1 to 10, moderate-intensity workouts should feel like a 4 or 5; vigorous activities will range from 5 to 7. No workout buddy? No problem.

Dogmatic Thinking

"Don't be trapped by dogma -
which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Don't let the noise of other's opinions
drown out your own inner voice."

Steve Jobs (R.I.P.)

Mattering

When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be,

you matter.

Deep Sleep

Can’t remember the last time you slept through the night? Without uninterrupted sleep, your memory suffers. Deep sleep is key.
Sleep experts already know that lack of sleep impacts brain function, affecting concentration, attention and memory. But a new study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that even if you’re clocking eight hours of sleep time, if some of those hours aren’t uninterrupted, memory consolidation (when your brain backs up all the information you’ve gathered in the past day) is impaired. This is especially important for people who suffer from sleep apnea and other disorders that interrupt sleep.
The study didn’t reach any conclusions about the amount of continuous sleep needed, but it’s likely that deep sleep is what’s important for the memory consolidation process to work.
To help improve the quality of your sleep, avoid drinking alcohol in the evenings. Amazingly, it’s the most commonly used sleeping aid, and yet it’s also one of the most ineffective! Yes, alcohol makes you feel drowsy, and, yes, it can help you initially fall asleep. But once alcohol’s relaxing effects have worn off, your body experiences rebound arousal and insomnia. Plus, alcohol usually suppresses deep sleep and causes lighter, fragmented sleep with more awakenings.

Embracing The Moment

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us.
What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.
Embrace the moment.

Confusion

Confusion isn’t a bad thing.

It means you’re growing and thinking.