One In, Two Out

sim·plic·i·ty  (noun)

1.  the state, quality, or an instance of being simple.
2.  freedom from complexity or intricacy.
3.  absence of luxury, pretentiousness, ornament, etc.; plainness.
4.  freedom from deceit or guile; sincerity; artlessness.

As you find yourself putting away those new Christmas acquisitions, consider what you already have.  If you're reading this blog, then you likely have more than you need.  Start the new year on a new, simpler trajectory with the One In, Two Out Rule.  Whenever you bring a new item in, you have to get rid of two others - preferably by gifting or donation, not in the landfill.  Make one of your new year's resolutions that of simplicity.

Simplicity isn't about martyrdom, or being boring.  Simplicity is all about finding the greatest value in our lives and then staying right there in that sweet spot. When we hit that sweet spot we need to really believe that any more would be excess and may even reduce the value in our lives.  This creates more space and awareness for what really matters in our lives - shelter, food, friends.  The second we lose sight of our basic needs is the second we lose the ability to embrace simplicity and enjoy our satisfaction with just enough.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”   - Leonardo da Vinci

 

 
Minimalism as a lifestyle looks different for everyone, but we can all experiment with minimalism similarly. Boundaries and challenges allow us to test the waters and find the sweet spot.  That sweet spot will change depending on who you are, where you live, who lives with you and what is most important to you.

Here are some tips to help you simplify:

1.  Ask yourself, could you be just as happy without this thing? You have to determine if this thing in your life is adding to your happiness/satisfaction.  If it isn’t, get rid of it right now!
2.  Determine the actual part of this thing that positively affects you. This will need to be revaluated every so often as the flow from a want to a need can be a slippery slope.

So, let's talk a bit more about the difference between a want and a need.  The difference is pretty simple, in theory.

Need - something you have to have
Want - something you would like to have

Everything that goes beyond this – a big house, name-brand clothes, fancy foods, a new car – is a want. But, we are marketed to constantly with the message that these things are really needs.  Take control of your mind and stop (literally) buying into corporate brainwashing.
Simplicity is not a destination, simplicity is about choice.  Making your own choices based on what is truly satisfying, and not simply believing what you're told.  Savor Simplicity by choosing to:

• Consume less, and don't think of items as disposable.  Remember that just because something goes in the trash doesn't mean it ever really goes away.
• Don't spend more than you earn.  Debt is the antithesis of living a life of simplicity.
• Wake up 10 minutes early and spend the beginning of your day stretching, or being quiet instead of rushing to get out the door.
• Take a digital sabbatical instead of being overwhelmed with information.
• Take charge of your worry instead of letting anxiety take over your day.
• Be unproductive instead of killing yourself to get it all done.
• Eat food that makes your body feel good instead of feeding your feelings with food that wears you down.
• Celebrate your progress instead of beating yourself up for what you haven’t achieved.
• Be grateful for who you are now, instead of guilty for who you were then.
• Measure yourself by the person you are, not the things that you get done.
• Meet up with friends instead of feeling lonely.
• Choose solitude instead of trying to navigate through the noise.
• Go outside and appreciate nature instead of cleaning your house.
• Support good people doing great things instead of complaining about bad people doing bad things.
• Dress with less, buy second-hand, or learn how to sew instead of buying lots of cheap fast-fashion.
• Give more and take less.

A clutter free home and debt free lifestyle do not necessarily result in simplicity. But both of those things are really helpful in clearing your mind and giving you more freedom to live life on purpose.  Excerpted from BeMoreWithLess.com

“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away

at the inessentials.”   - Bruce Lee

 

 

How To Change Your Life: Step 2

Step 2 - One Change at a Time. We need to accept that things don’t change overnight, that there’s nothing wrong with us, and that other people’s changes weren’t as easy as they might seem. A common element of failure to change is that we take on too much at once. Do yourself a favor and start with one change for a month before considering a second. Only add another change if you were successful at the first.

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."  - Lao Tzu

As a society, we glorify huge life overhauls. TV shows like The Biggest Loser give us the impression that we can completely transform ourselves in a relatively short period of time. This kind of rapid change is not only unrealistic, but unsustainable.  The problem is that we tend to deceive ourselves  - "I'll start on Monday!" and "I'll never do that again!"  The biggest problem with these types of self deceptions is that they don't really address the problem. The focus is on the end result instead of on the individual habits we need to change in order to transition from our current lifestyle to the lifestyle we actually want. And that’s the key: transition. The single biggest reason our attempts to change fail is because we don't give ourselves the time needed to transition.

So, start small.  Remember, one change at a time.  The time you spend daily can be as little as 10 minutes, but commit to it every day.  And try and stick with the same time every day.  This is often how our minds works with habit anyway, and makes it just that much easier to remember a new routine.

What daily change will you make today?

 

"A year from now you will wish you had started today." - Karen Lamb 

How To Change Your Life: Step 1

As the end of the year approaches, I'm beginning to reassess where I am with my goals for the year.  Did I actively work towards them?  What were my successes, and failures?  What changes do I want in my life in 2014?  Who do I want to be?

We are what we repeatedly do everyday – our habits.  We have positive habits, that empower us and are aligned with our goals, and we had bad, or even destructive habits, that prevent us from having the success and happiness we want. Most people don’t know that it takes at least 21 days to create a habit.  Most of us haven’t consciously created the habits we currently have.  We often just inherited habits from our peers or developed them at an early age.  

But, what if you could consciously create new habits that would compound over a period of time and transform your life?  The answer is - You can.  Ask yourself - What is something that I want to change in your life? What am I unhappy with? What would I like to add to my life that would enhance it? Whatever that area is, if you want to create lasting change, you need to make a commitment to consistently condition yourself the way you want to be for at least 30 days for it to become habitual.

Start by asking yourself - What do I want to be?  Write it down.  You can set a goal you'd like to achieve in a week, a year, or 10 years from now, but the you must make a daily change, or you'll never establish new habits to achieve your goal. You can make daily and monthly goals too and the steps to achieve your ultimate goals, but you must daily changes. The truth is, if you’re not willing to make it a daily change, you don’t really want to change your life in this way. 

So ask yourself - If my life had absolutely no limits and I could have it all and do whatever I wanted, what would I choose to have and what would I choose to do? Describe your ideal lifestyle. List what you would do throughout the day if you knew that you were bound to be successful, what kind of person you would be, how much money you would earn, and where you would live. This question allows you to realize who you would truly want to be if there were no limits. Establish a clear and specific outcome.

So, do you know who you really want to be?  OK then, now let's talk about how to get there...

Step 1 - Select specific patterns to break and replace with new behavior
When you decide that you’re not going to stand for your current situation any longer, then it’s time to devise a plan to change your behavior. The first step is to replace the old habits with new, healthy behavior. Whenever you feel the urge to engage in your old habits or are in a situation that triggers the behavior, incorporate your new behavior pattern. For example, maybe you have a drink every night when you come home from work, and want to slow down. When you come home you need something to replace that simple habit of going to the fridge and pouring a glass of wine or beer. You must have something to fill the void and minimize initial feeling that you're missing out. What new behavior can you introduce to replace your old habit?  Can you introduce a new habit you'd like to form - some stepping stone towards achieving your larger goals - into this gap?  Maybe your goal is to get fit, or start a creative hobby. This is a great chance to not only fill the void, but eliminate your initial feelings of loss.

What daily change will you make today?

"When you lose something in your life, stop thinking it's a loss for you... it is a gift you have been given so you can get on the right path to where you are meant to go, not to where you think you should have gone."  - Suze Orman

Boycott Black Friday





Boycott Black Friday this year and every year. Don't buy anything and help end the madness. I know this is the premium shopping day of the year when businesses make most of their profits for the year, but at what cost? Shoppers who get out at 3 a.m. to save $15 on a tablet usually see it fit to act like animals. Stores can make money year round by providing fair prices and good customer service. We don't have to act like animals anymore. We're better than this.  Join the movement today! 
 

There are gift alternatives that are much more thoughtful and don't help feed the system.  Try making your gifts this year - it can be as simple as cooking or making a gift certificate for a service.  In the past, I've gifted a day of gardening or cleaning to my aging parents.  It gives us time to be together and provides something they really need to boot.  Honestly, in this day and age, everyone just buys what they want.  And most of that they don't really need.  I'll make an exception if I happen to find the perfect gift for someone, but then I also don't save it 'til Christmas and make it special by the fact that it's unexpected.  If you really want to buy something, especially for kids, buy local, and locally made to support your community.

It's time to change and come back to the reason for the season - Acknowledging all that we're thankful for and spending quality time with those we love.

Give Thanks

"When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself."   - Tecumseh

 

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”  - Marcel Proust

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”   - Ralph Waldo Emerson

You Can Never Be Too Thankful

Thanksgiving offers the opportunity to do something we should really be doing every day of the year: Thinking about, and expressing, what we're grateful for. And really, there's a whole host of reasons why we should make gratitude a daily practice.

We all like being thanked. It's a great feeling when it's sincere, and not perfunctory. Being thanked and having reason to thank others are two sides of the same gratefulness coin. Both exemplify the positive in human behavior and provide us with a positive charge that boosts our emotional balance. People feel and express gratitude in multiple ways. They can apply it to the past (retrieving positive memories), the present (not taking good fortune for granted as it comes), and the future (maintaining a hopeful and optimistic attitude).

Regardless the "why", it's a quality that we all can, and should, cultivate.

Grateful people are more stress resistant. There are a number of studies showing that in the face of serious trauma, adversity, and suffering, if people have a grateful disposition, they’ll recover more quickly. Gratitude gives people a perspective from which they can interpret negative life events and help them guard against post-traumatic stress and lasting anxiety.

Gratitude makes us nicer. As a result, it helps us make more friends and deepen our existing relationships.

Gratitude allows us to celebrate the present. Gratitude actually magnifies positive emotions. Research on emotion shows that positive emotions fade quickly. Our emotional systems like newness. We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new spouse, the new house, don’t feel so new and exciting anymore. But gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and this makes us less likely to take it for granted. As a result, gratitude allows us to participate more fully in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures we get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things - movies, computer screens, sports - but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.

Gratitude helps us come to terms with the past.  Our memories are not set in stone. There are dozens of ways our memories get changed over time – we remember things as being worse than they actually were, as being longer or shorter, people as being kinder or crueler, as being more or less interesting, and so on. Experiencing gratitude in the present makes us more likely to remember positive memories, and actually transforms some of our neutral or even negative memories into positive ones. In one study, putting people into a grateful mood helped them find closure of upsetting memories. During these experiences, participants were more likely to recall positive aspects of the memory than usual, and some of the negative and neutral aspects were transformed into positives.

Gratitude makes us less aggressive.  If you count your blessings, you're more likely to empathize with other people. In an article in Medical News Today, Professor Nathan DeWall is quoted as saying "I wanted to bust the myth that only certain people are grateful... Gratitude is an equal opportunity emotion that causes lower levels of aggression." An activity as basic as writing a letter or mentally counting your blessings can be enough to decrease aggression. "Take a step back, and look at what you've got," said DeWall. "Don't spend every waking moment being grateful, but one time a week definitely increases your well-being over time. And if you get bad news you're given a shot that protects you."

Gratitude lessens the desire for material satisfaction.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. The problem with materialism is that it makes us feel less competent, it reduces our ability to appreciate and enjoy the good in life, it generates negative emotions, and makes us more self-centered.

Gratitude can even help in the workplace.

Gratitude makes you a more effective manager. Effective management requires a toolbox of skills. Criticism comes all too easily to most, while the ability to feel gratitude and express praise is often lacking. Timely, sincere, specific, behavior focused praise to be highly motivating and is often a more powerful method of influencing change than criticism. Contrary to expectation, if praise is moderate and behavior focused, repeat expressions of gratitude will not lose their impact, and employee performance will increase.
 
And it's healthy too!  Gratitude increases sleep quality, reduces the time required to fall asleep, and can help with insomnia. The key is what’s on our minds as we’re trying to fall asleep. If it’s worries about the kids, or anxiety about work, the level of stress in our body will increase, reducing sleep quality, and keeping us awake. Gratitude can’t cure cancer (neither can positive-thinking), but it can strengthen your physiological functioning. Some recent science have shown that those who engage in gratitude practices have been shown to feel less pain, go to the doctor less often, have lower blood pressure, and be less likely to develop a mental disorder.


Try these 7 easy tips:

• Keep a daily gratitude journal.  It only takes 5 minutes a day.  Participants in studies who have done this have reported significant benefits after just ten weeks.
  What a deal to reap all these benefits!
• Overcome the obstacles. Two obstacles to being grateful are forgetfulness and lack of awareness. You can counter them by giving yourself visual cues that trigger thoughts of gratitude. Place Post-It notes where you'll see them as simple reminders.
• Vow Not to Complain. We are all guilty of complaining, and, quite frankly, it feels good, right? But our complaining creates negativity in our lives, which attracts even more negativity.  Psychologists say that it takes a minimum of 21 days to form a new habit. Again, it will take awareness to first recognize your bad habit.  But awareness is the first step. Can you stop complaining for 21 days?
• Find a grateful person and spend more time them. If we hang out with ungrateful people, their attitude tends to rub off on us. If you have a grateful people in your life, the influence will be in another direction.
• Think of every day as a gift.  When you awake, take a moment to reflect on all that you're grateful for - a warm bed, the birds singing outside, the ability to work, the hot cup of coffee that awaits you, the eager smile of your child, and the gift of being alive for another day. Starting the day in gratitude helps to affirm the abundance that surrounds us, and if we continually think about this abundance, we will attract even more of it and feel uplifted.
• Show and Speak Your Gratitude. Did you ever receive an unexpected note or letter where a person poured their heart out in thanks for something that you did for them? What a great feeling to be the recipient of such gratitude. There are so many opportunities in life where we can send a simple thank you note, which could make someone's day. Think about who you can say thank you to either in person or in a note. It can be for simple things, but it should be heartfelt.  Then do it!
• Return to simpler things.  Don't race through life as if it's a contest. In modern life, we're too often consumed by answering e-mails and cell phones. Slow down and be in the present. Think about some of the things you can do that make you happy such as swimming, hiking, bike riding, dancing all night long, cooking dinner for a friend, looking at the stars, sitting on the porch for hours in the summer, having a hearty laugh, or playing with your child. Take the time now to enjoy the simpler things!

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melody Beattie

Eating Healthy Over the Holidays

The holiday season is a time to celebrate with family and friends. Unfortunately, for many it also becomes a time for over-eating and weight gain. You can change this. Focus on a healthy balance of food, activity, and fun. By implementing a few simple tips you can stay healthy through the holiday season.

Keep in mind that these tips are not about "dieting".  I don't believe dieting works.  It's about maintaining a healthy lifestyle over the holidays so that you don't feel like a total slug come January 1.


Be realistic. Don’t try to lose pounds during the holidays, instead try to maintain your current weight.
  
Use appetizer plates. Using a smaller plate helps prevent overeating.

Harness the Diet Power of Produce. If you're hosting a party, add more simple vegetable and fruit dishes to your menu instead of heavy dishes with sauces. Your guests will fill up on healthy fiber without lots of extra calories. 

Plan time for exercise. Exercise helps relieve holiday stress and prevent weight gain. A moderate and daily increase in exercise can help partially offset increased holiday eating. Short on time?  Squeeze in a 15-minute brisk walk twice a day. 

Balance Your Meals. Don't fill up your plate with only the rich, high calorie food. Instead, have a little of everything, but be sure to include lots of fruit and vegetables. That way, you'll still be able to enjoy your favorite holiday foods as well as receive an array of important, healthful nutrients. 

Watch the liquid Calories. Alcohol can lessen inhibitions and induce overeating. Non-alcoholic beverages can be full of calories and sugar.  Even if you're careful, a long evening of holiday cocktails and wine can still add up to a lot of empty calories.

•  One cup of eggnog – without added liquor – has about 350 calories and 19 grams of fat.
•  One cup of champagne has about 182 calories.
•  One, four-ounce serving of red wine has about 100 calories.   

Eat until you are satisfied, not stuffed. Savor your favorite holiday treats while eating small portions. Sit down, get comfortable, and enjoy.

Continue reading below...

Scan the buffet. Choose your favorite foods and skip your least favorite. Include vegetables, fruits, and foods that are simply prepared to keep your plate balanced. Resist the urge to go back for more by waiting at least 20 minutes for your brain to register that you are comfortably full. If you're still hungry, eat more vegetables and drink water.

If you do splurge, don't beat yourself up, the experts say. Just get right back to normal eating and exercising, and try to do a better job at the next party. 

Avoid hanging around the food.  If you catch yourself socializing around the buffet table find away to bring to move the conversation into another room that doesn’t have food. When you socialize around food the more likely you are to snack more.  

Limit the Sweets. Remember that rich, sugary foods have a way of making you crave even more rich and sugary foods. If you do have a craving for something sweet, try to satisfy it with a piece of fruit or a bit of dark chocolate, or take half a serving of that piece of pie that you just can't resist.

Roast or Grill for Rich Flavor.  Roasting or grilling meat, seafood, vegetables, and potatoes, is a simple, low-calorie cooking style that brings out the natural sweetness and flavor in foods. Roasted sweet potatoes with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar and a spritz of butter spray are delicious substitutes for the traditional calorie-laden casserole.  

Bring a healthy dish. Bring your favorite healthy dish to holiday parties.  This is great for vegetarians and vegans because you know you have something great to eat besides chips.  It also introduces your friends and families to something festive and healthy! 

Take the focus off food. Turn candy and cookie making time into non-edible projects like making wreaths, dough art decorations or a gingerbread house. Plan group activities with family and friends that aren’t all about food.

Be Assertive. Don't feel you must say yes to everyone that offers you something to eat or drink. If you are not hungry, then just say so. Don’t let yourself be pressured into eating something that you really don’t want.

Eat Before You Go to Parties. Never go to a party or event feeling hungry. If you arrive to a party feeling really hungry because you have been “saving up” your calories all day, you risk being so hungry by the time you get there that you lose control over how much you eat. Instead, eat well throughout the day, eating small, healthy snacks like a handful of nuts or apple slices and almond butter. And be sure to drink plenty of water. Before leaving for a party, eat a light snack to curb your appetite. You will be less tempted to over-indulge.

Practice Healthy Holiday Cooking. Preparing favorite dishes lower in fat and calories will help promote healthy holiday eating. Incorporate some of these simple-cooking tips in traditional holiday recipes to make them healthier.

• Gravy — Refrigerate the gravy to harden fat. Skim the fat off. This will save a whopping 56 gm of fat per cup.
• Dressing — Use a little less bread and add more onions, garlic, celery, and vegetables. Add fruits such as cranberries or apples. Moisten or flavor with low-fat, low-sodium stock.
• Turkey – Enjoy delicious, roasted turkey breast without the skin and save 11 grams of saturated fat per 3 oz. serving.
• Mashed Potato — Use skim milk, stock, roasted garlic and olive oil instead of whole milk and butter.
• Quick Holiday Nog — Four bananas, 1-1/2 cups skim milk or soymilk, 1-1/2 cups plain nonfat yogurt, 1/4 teaspoon rum extract, and ground nutmeg. Blend all ingredients except nutmeg. Puree until smooth. Top with nutmeg.
• Desserts — Make pumpkin pie with walnut crust. Top cakes with fresh fruit or fruit sauce instead of fattening frosting.  Or serve dark chocolate-dipped strawberries for a colorful and delicious finale.

Use these tips to take control of holiday eating, not be a slave to your cravings and to the convenience of a party buffet. In the long run, your mind and body will thank you.

Tips for Nutritional Healing

These are just a few of the incredible discoveries I made through the ton of research I did for my 6-week cleanse earlier this year. 

Foods to enjoy daily:

• At the top of the list are cruciferous veggies.  Eat as much as you can, but at least one serving raw and one cooked every day.  The health benefits are amazing!
• Eat your greens - the darker the better!  Shoot for 8 servings a day.  This has been shown to decrease risk of cancer and a whole host of other ailments.
• Raw oats, sprouted nuts, and low-sugar fruits. Combined they truly are the breakfast of champions.
• Hot lemon water in the morning 
• Drink lots of water and green tea throughout the day

Healthy food substitutes:

• Instead of chips, try rice or raw crackers with supergreens mix or raw nut cheese
• Instead of a candy bar, try carob-almond milk or raw walnut-cacao dreamy bars
• Instead of a cookie, try an apple with raw almond butter, or bake some healthy cookies like these sesame-oat-cranberry cookies
• Instead of that afternoon mocha or latte, try a decaf, sugar-free chai
• Instead of ice cream, try easy kiwi sorbet

“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” - Thomas Edison

Some of the key tips I want to share are about how to reduce your dependence on the 3 worst enemies of the standard American diet - Salt, Sugar, and Fat.  This trinity isn't wholly bad, but the quantities many of us ingest definitely are detrimental to our health and longevity.  Read Michael Moss' book Salt, Sugar, Fat to learn more.

Salt:

• The key here is to take control of your eating.  Cut out, or way back, on the processed foods; and start cooking at home.
• When cooking at home, try adding salt only at the end.  If the food still tastes a bit bland, jazz it up with lemon, garlic, chilies, or other spices.  And don't leave the salt shaker on the table.
• At the grocery store, look for unsalted or low-salt varieties
• Always taste your food before you salt

Sugar:

• This one's critical - Eat less sugar!  Lightly sweeten with alternatives like dates, orange juice, honey, brown rice syrup, or sucanat. Here's a great list.
• Don't go "low fat", this usually means more sugar.
• Eat fruit as a dessert
• Cut out sweet drinks
• When cooking at home, reduce the amount of sugar in a recipe.  And try using other complex flavors instead of just going sweet - coconut, fruit, nuts, spices.
• Switch to sourdough bread, instead of standard loaves made with honey and sugar.
• At the grocery store, read labels.  There's much more sugar than you might expect in salad dressing, ketchup, and many other condiments.

Fat:

• Again, the key here is to take control of your eating.  Cut out, or way back, on the processed and fast foods; and start cooking at home.
• Avoid all trans fats
• Don't go "low fat".  This usually means more sugar, salt, processing, or all of the above.
• Fall in love with olive oil.  Olive oil is great for you, and delicious in sweet and savory dishes.  Here's a full list of good and bad fats.

Healthy changes to your way of thinking:

• Don't eat foods that are out of season.  Not sure, check out this handy guide.
• Eliminate all processed foods, GMO foods, artificial ingredients and preservatives
• Eat whole foods 
• Eat all the vegetables you want - the darker in color the better
• Lower your intake of carbs + potatoes
• Try going veg or flexitarian.  Here are a couple good cookbooks by chef Peter Berley to get you started - veg + flex)
• Cut back on the coffee + alcohol

“If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it”   - Common sense

Tea Time #2

I love taking the time to enjoy a cup of tea.  There's something inherently calming about imbibing a warm cup of herbal essence.  Even more enjoyable, is when the tea in question has a meaningful bit of wisdom or inspiration attached to it, as do the Good Earth varieties.  Today's quote is:

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution."  - Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer.  He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement, and his experimentation was indicative of the Synthetist style of modern art. He also paved the way to the appreciation of primitivism. Gauguin styled himself and his art as "savage." Although he began his artistic career with the Impressionists in Paris, during the late 1880's he fled farther and farther from urban civilization in search of an edenic paradise where he could create pure, "primitive" art. Yet his self-imposed exile to the South Seas was not so much an escape from Paris as a bid to become the new leader of the Parisian avant-garde. Gauguin's rejection of his European family, society, and the Paris art world for a life apart, in the land of the "Other," has come to serve as a romantic example of the artist-as-wandering-mystic.

 

You Are What You Eat

A saying so cliched we've come to ignore the wisdom in it.

I was so impressed by the changes I felt after my cleanse at the beginning of the year, that I've decided to do a 2-week cleanse biannually.  One of the most pronounced changes was in my perception of food.  Not just something to stuff in my mouth when I'm hungry, or to enjoy simply for the taste, but the conviction that food is medicine. 

Americans are bombarded with information about "healthy eating," but we suffer from higher rates of obesity and chronic disease than ever before. We are told one year to avoid fat and the next to avoid carbohydrates. It's enough to make anyone distrust nutritional advice altogether, particularly anything that claims that "food is medicine."

If we're honest with ourselves, we don't really need much advice because we already know what we should do: eat a variety of foods, especially whole grains, fruits, and vegetables; minimize or eliminate processed foods; and be mindful of how much we eat. And, do some physical activity each day. If we know all this, then why do we have all the complicated nutritional advice, contradictory research studies, and endless health diets? In part because they give the food companies a way to sell more products. And for us, it is often easier to read about what we should do, then actually change our eating patterns. As a result, our standard American diet is ruining our health.

As a nation, we're doing less cooking and increasingly eating more processed foods that have little to no nutritional benefit.  We're also eating less variety of foods. Ironically, while 17,000 new products are introduced each year, two-thirds of our calories come from just four foods: corn, soy, wheat, and rice.  It's easy to fall into the pattern of eating fast, convenient, prepared food, especially in our often frenetic lives. But we are not nurturing ourselves by doing so. 

A John's Hopkins study found that only 10% of Americans eat the recommended "five a day" of fruits and vegetables. At least 50% don't eat any vegetables. Shocking statistics given that the people surveyed considered themselves nutrition "savvy". (American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2007).

Diet and exercise have long been two important ingredients to staying health and living longer, but now there is a belief in using food as medicine. Foods may appear healthy because the sugar content is zero or it's “low carb.” But real health cannot be found in synthetic foods which falsely promise health by focusing merely on numbers.  We need real food to thrive. Depriving our bodies of basic nutrition is more an attempt to fool our systems, not heal them!

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food"  - Hippocrates

Eating well is not just about putting good food into your body, but also about enjoying the experience. People complain that healthy food doesn't taste good.  This has a lot to do with the fact that we've become accustomed to the excess of salt, sugar and fat in our daily diets.  Every year, the average American eats 33 pounds of cheese (triple what we ate in 1970) and 70 pounds of sugar (about 22 teaspoons a day). We ingest 8,500 milligrams of salt a day, double the recommended amount, and almost none of that comes from the shakers on our table. It comes from processed food. It’s no wonder, then, that one in three adults, and one in five kids, is clinically obese. It’s no wonder that twenty-six million Americans have diabetes, the processed food industry in the U.S. accounts for $1 trillion a year in sales, and the total economic cost of this health crisis is approaching $300 billion a year. (excerpted from Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss)

The good news is that taste in a food can be changed. People often dislike certain foods because they’re not used to them. Once you’re used to a food, it can taste great . And when you know that that food is actually good for you, and is healing your body from the inside out, it can taste magical. Here's a great A-Z list of healing foods.

There are so many benefits of a healthy diet, but the primary one is that you only have one body. Does it make sense to harm the most precious thing that you have? Don’t wait until you have no choice but to become healthier. Adopt a healthy lifestyle that makes you look and feel better. A healthy lifestyle shouldn’t be something for the short term - it's a “lifestyle”. Head to your local farmer's market this week - it's never too late to start being healthy.

"To keep the body in good health is a duty... otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear."  - Buddha 

Lessons from the Wild #10

hum·ble (adjective)

1.  not proud or arrogant; modest
2.  having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.
3.  low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.
4.  courteously respectful
5.  low in height, level, etc.

Is humility practical?  How do we practice the virtue of humility in such a competitive world?

How can anyone achieve success without ambition and a competitive spirit? Who doesn't feel elated and proud after accomplishing something great?

On the surface, humility appears to be a foreign concept in our modern world.

We can all agree that humility is an admirable quality in others, because we feel comfortable around people who are humble. But when it comes to ourselves, we may consider humility a hindrance to success and a by-product of failure. Perhaps, humility seems to make sense only when we feel defeated. Then, we can at least claim that we've learned the important virtue of humility, until we are ready to get back on our feet to fight yet another battle. Though it seems rational, this line of reasoning actually prevents us from achieving a deeper understanding of the virtue of humility.

Real humility means having a healthy perspective of one’s own abilities (suffering neither egotism nor low self esteem) as well as one’s own limitations and a value for the importance and abilities of others.

In most religions, humility is a sign of respect for a higher power -

• Christianity provides the classic religious statement of humility, "Blessed be the meek for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5).
• In Islam (which itself means surrender), humility is a primary virtue.
• Taoism focuses believers' thoughts on the awesome beauty and wonder of Nature. As you ponder the magnificence of Nature, you learn to respect our place relative to the stars and the seasons - a humbling experience.
• Buddhism teaches that, through humility, one can release anger and learn to live a life free from attachments and suffering.

For me, wandering through a vast and majestic landscape is incredibly humbling.  It's where I feel most a part of something larger than myself, and where I also feel most vulnerable.

I've recently been reading an interesting biography of Howard Zahniser, an early American environmental activist and primary author of the Wilderness Act of 1964.  Zahniser was a gifted writer and eloquently wrote about the importance of nature, and wilderness:

“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

In preserving Wilderness we are essentially preserving an endangered experience, and an endangered idea — the idea that self-willed landscape has value and should exist.

Wilderness offers the opportunity to experience a relationship between humans and nature that is increasingly rare in our modern world, a relationship in which humans do not dominate, manipulate, or control nature but instead immerse ourselves as a member in the larger community of life. 

“Without the gadgets, the inventions, the contrivances whereby men have seemed to establish among themselves an independence of nature, without these distractions, to know wilderness is to know a profound humility, to recognize one’s littleness, to sense dependence and interdependence, indebtedness, and responsibility.”  - Howard Zahniser

Keeping the idea of Wilderness alive requires our participation in a special relationship with these landscapes that is very different from the utilitarian, commodity-oriented manner in which modern society generally interacts with nature. Preserving the idea of Wilderness requires humans to exercise humility and restraint, not dominance over the land and its natural processes. The opportunity to experience this kind of relationship with nature is an increasingly rare experience in our modern world. Designated Wilderness is the only landscape where this form of interaction between humans and the rest of nature is written into law.

“A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land.”  - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Embrace the virtue of humility and all it can offer:

• By remaining humble, you are receptive to opportunities to improve.
• Humility is a virtue for inner well-being. Frustrations and losses don’t have the same impact if you don’t get your ego involved. If you combine humility with motivation, you have the ability to drive towards successes without letting the failures knock you out of balance.

“By seeing the seed of failure in every success, we remain humble. By seeing the seed of success in every failure we remain hopeful.” - Unknown

Lessons from the Wild #9

Leave-no-trace camping is an increasingly popular, and necessary, approach to travel in wilderness areas. As the term suggests, the goal is for the camper to have as little impact as possible on the location they are visiting. One of its mottos is "Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints."

The principles of "Leave No Trace" were developed in response to concerns that the increasing number of human visitors to previously uninhabited (or lightly inhabited) wilderness areas would destroy the very characteristics that make them attractive, and irreparably harm native species. While each individual visitor might have an insignificant impact, the cumulative effect of thousands, and even millions of visitors to a site over the years would be profound. Rather than removing humanity altogether from these environments, leave-no-trace camping seeks to minimize the changes we make just by visiting. It's also a courtesy to the people who'll be visiting the same place the next day, or the next year, giving them a chance to experience the area the same way you did.  

Here's a great list of 29 Leave No Trace principles to keep in mind.  

Because I do so much backcountry camping, and like to go cross-country (where there are no established trails) the approach is almost the opposite. Rather than trying to concentrate your impact (such as on a single trail) the idea is to disperse it as much as possible. Try to avoid following trails others have left, because that tends to make them larger and more damaging. Several people walking single-file etches your shared trail more deeply, but each member of your party can instead tread more lightly on their own path. Walk on the most durable ground you can: rock instead of dirt, dead grasses instead of live plants, dry soil instead of muddy. 

Once you start practicing Leave No Trace, you'll wonder why it took you so long to get the hang of it.  Wilderness is a rare and precious thing, and it's up to us to be its stewards.  Unfortunately, many people are still clueless about these principles.  So why not help out and take it a step further?

Negative Trace is about actually removing trash or undoing damage that others have caused. It can be as easy as bending over and picking up a stray trail bar wrapper. Some people also refer to this ethic as "Erase The Trace".  Those of us that get so much enjoyment from spending time in nature should take time to give back. Land managers are often short on trail maintainers and wilderness rangers, so why not help maintain your favorite areas? A little preventative maintenance can make a big difference.

Lessons from the Wild #8

By now, you've probably gained a sense of the importance Nature has in my life.  As it should.  In all of ours.  We were born from nature, and we rely on it for the very essence of life.  Every time I have the privilege to be immersed in it, I never fail to gain some new insight.

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."  - Albert Einstein

My most recent immersion was a 9-day section of the High Sierra Route - a much more adventurous alternative to the popular John Muir Trail across the Eastern Sierras of California.  My aim was to do something more challenging... to get off the beaten path... challenge myself.  And I did.  I traveled almost exclusively cross-country - without a trail - crossing six 12,000' passes, and summiting two 14,000' peaks.  There were many lessons I learned along the way, but chief among them was the importance of finding your own path.   

Humans seek. It's what we do. We seek enlightenment, self-improvement, physical perfection, a shorter commute...  Nature is such a strong force in the world that no matter where we live or what our lifestyle, there is always a bit of the natural world creeping in. Even the concrete jungles of major cities are still home to a number of "greenspaces" where the inspiration of nature can be felt. 

“I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.”   - Gary Snyder  

If you haven't already realized what life changing effects nature can have, you probably haven't spent much time in natural surroundings.  Or if you have, you haven't really taken the time to gain the awareness of what nature does. Nature is a connection to your soul. It's how you spend time getting to know yourself - your true self.

In modern life, while nature is still present, there is a tangible disconnect for people. This is especially true for those of us who live in suburban, or urban environments. We have pills for every ailment, GPS units to navigate, and we get our "food" from the supermarket.  Our advances in technology and convenience aren't necessarily bad things, but we need to keep things in perspective and not forget about our past. Our connection to nature should always be cherished and remembered.  There are many benefits to "getting back to nature". Research has shown that a connection to nature decreases stress and stimulates healing, and it makes people nicer!

As society continues to become more isolating, a growing number of people are uncertain about what to do with their lives - how to add value to it, provide meaning for it, or to simply find some measure of happiness in it.  Spending time in nature can bring clarity.

“Not all those who wander are lost.”                 - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 

Everyone has heard that life is a journey and not a destination. As we journey through life, we can do so with a path in mind. The path doesn't have to be specific at first, or necessarily ever. It could be one we deliberately set, or one with no deliberate intent. A path is as much an expression of our individuality or uniqueness as it is a direction, purpose, or intent.  Finding the right path means getting to know ourselves first. We can have more than one path going at any given time, so long as they aren't in conflict.

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."   - Henry David Thoreau

The key is to become an intuitive navigator.  Be aware.  Look closely and see the signs, as subtle as they may be.  Respect your own individuality.  Not everyone will see things the same, and you may not have chosen the best path, but there are lessons to be learned on the journey all the same. 

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”   - Ernest Hemingway