Prevention Is What Matters

In the last decade or so mounting research has shown how lifestyle changes, including exercise, stress management, and diet can prevent almost ninety percent (90%) of chronic illnesses in our society.

Meditation, restful sleep, healthy diet, emotional and social well-being, exercise, breathing techniques, and healthy relationships can change disease-related gene expression, which in turn can dynamically change how we experience health or disease.

-- Deepak Chopra

Tumbleweeds or Watered Trees

This is what the Lord says:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
  who draws strength from mere flesh
  and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
  they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
  in a salt land where no one lives.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
  whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
  that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
  its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought.

-- Jeremiah 17:5-8

What do I want to be? A tumbleweed blowing around where no one else lives or a nourished and strong tree offering life to my surroundings?  The answer (result) is in where I place my trust (confidence).

Happy!

This one makes me feel about as good as this one did!

The anxiety of unplugging and why we should disconnect to connect

I recently read The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age by clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair with Teresa H. Barker and was horrified by how much I saw of myself and my family and friends in the authors' case studies. Steiner-Adair is a clinical instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an associate psychologist at McLean Hospital. I reached out to Steiner-Adair because I wanted to better understand how to take control of our technology instead of letting it control us. The conversation was good timing for me as Reboot’s National Day of Unplugging begins this Friday night and I'm the spokesperson. But this was the chance for me to listen to someone else urging us to pause and consider the benefits and risks of technology. Read the interview here....

-- Tanya Schevitz, spokesperson for Reboot's National Day of Unplugging

Presence matters....

Expert

I don't believe in innate talent. You have to work with perseverance to become an expert in any discipline.

-- Ben Heine

Perseverance

In the realm of ideas, everything depends on enthusiasm; in the real world, all rests on perseverance.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Forgiveness - Eva Kor

A powerful story about something even more powerful than you can imagine -- forgiveness.

The U.S. Economy: Kidding Ourselves

Small business is dying in this country, and this will have catastrophic consequences for our economy and way of life. Up to 50% of all jobs are in small businesses and approximately 65% of all new good jobs are created by them, according to the Small Business Administration. Without startups and growing small businesses, nothing will fix America’s economic energy, let alone create new good jobs.

Let me put it this way: If the unemployment rate is really going down, then why did the issue become the new No. 1 problem facing Americans today? And why did Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, in her first congressional testimony this month, say, “Those out of a job for more than six months continue to make up an unusually large fraction of the unemployed, and the number of people who are working part time but would prefer a full-time job remains very high”? She also said, “…the recovery in the labor market is far from complete. The unemployment rate is still well above levels that Federal Open Market Committee participants estimate is consistent with maximum sustainable employment.”

Americans aren’t looking for part-time, crappy jobs, and they aren’t looking for more free time to paint or read. They want the respect and dignity of a full-time, good job. The problem is, U.S. adults with full-time jobs as a percentage of the U.S. adult population right now is 42% -- the lowest monthly average since Gallup started our Payroll to Population (P2P) metric in March of 2011.

-- Jim Clifton

Continue reading....

Freedom As An Opportunity

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

-- Galatians 5:13

Jump Shot

Welcome to March Madness!  A great story about the history of the 'jump shot', the quality of the man behind it, and what is really important in life.

How to Cope with What the Internet Does to Your Brain

Just as the hammer has extended our hands, the Internet extends the reach of our brains. When used efficiently as a tool, far from hurting us, technology makes us smarter. However, if the web’s distractions sometimes make your head hurt, you’re not alone. The brain performs optimally when focusing on one task rather than switching back and forth between multiple tasks. Some evidence suggests that it becomes more difficult for people to focus when they are accustomed to multitasking. Even if you don’t intend to multitask, the web’s numerous distractions can make you do so unintentionally.

It may seem difficult at first, but just as you formed the habit of multitasking, you can re-form the habit of focus. It just takes practice. Start by reading a book cover to cover. Less than 2% of Americans do that once per year.

-- Jeff Stibel

Continue reading here...

Appetite

Grandma Ruth would stand there in the kitchen and say it gravelly, her hands on her hips, like that could keep her together and standing.

“Touch that and die.” 

Barbara Ruth Morton, she knew pastry and pecan pies and turkey with stuffing and she knew that there is a consuming of sweet things that ruins your appetite for the main thing. I can still taste her glazed hams with scalloped potatoes.  The bent woman might have had a one room school house education, but she knew if she could keep us from some things, she could give us an appetite for the real thing.

Ruin your appetite with stuff and you have no appetite for Christ.

-- Ann Voskamp, North American Lent: When You Want to have an Appetite for More of God

Detox Cleanse - Day-3

It takes a kind of mental will to persist towards something.

Day-3 of our detox cleanse; there are times during this process where I have felt great.  Today I feel awful. I want to just quit drinking the smoothies and eat something crunchy, meaty, anything really...and lots of it.  But, I suspect this is a trained response...an impulse I have learned.  I tell myself, "this is only 3 days of your life...you can handle it.  And, after all, you're not starving!"

Today, I can tell myself at each moment something I believe, like "you can do this...it is only 24 more hours". I have told myself similar things at times when I don't feel like I can finish a run, "you have done this a thousand times before...you can do it again now" or "it is only 6 more minutes and then all this pain will be gone".

Mental will is a kind of trust in something.  I trust that the outcome I desire will happen, despite how I feel.  Most of the arguments that challenge my will seem designed to attack either the validity of my belief or the likelihood that something will happen, which seems to borrow quite selectively from the past -- remembering times when I failed to continue or persist at something.  To put it differently, the future seeks to influence the present.  But, I really only have the current moment...to act, to decide, to believe something.  I can learn to trust that today's actions, the decisions of this moment, will impact the future more than the possibility of the future not coming true (or coming true, if that's what I'm afraid of).

It all comes down to trusting...at this particular moment.  ...whether that be something being over in 24 hours or that God is in control and will provide for me whatever I truly need in the future.  All I have is the choice to trust, in this moment.

Drowning in Calories

I would like to suggest - as I have other times, in other places, including most recently the peer-reviewed journal where I serve as editor-in-chief – that obesity may be likened to drowning.

Before making that case, let’s pause long enough to consider the implications for personal responsibility. If we are going into the water, it makes sense that we first know how to swim. It makes sense that a parent on the beach would watch their own child with great vigilance. It makes sense that families would keep watch over their backyard pools. And it makes sense that we would put on life preservers while white-water rafting. So far, this sounds like a pretty hefty dose of personal responsibility.

It also makes sense that we don’t run advertisements at the beach encouraging swimmers to try their luck with the most dangerous riptides. It makes sense that we don't goad our neighbors’ children into the deep end of a pool before making sure they can swim. It makes sense that the body politic and culture don’t conspire to make people drown.

Now to my principal argument: obesity is just like drowning. We have been told by Michael Moss, and others before him, that our food supply is willfully manipulated by smart and highly trained people to maximize the eating we all do, the calories it takes to feel full, and-of course- the money we spend along the way. As a species, we have no native defenses against caloric excess in the first place, never having needed them before. Couple that with a food supply engineered to ensure that we “can’t eat just one,” and we all are primed to drown in calories.

But nothing is wrong with a body that drowns other than staying underwater too long; normal, healthy human beings drown if they stay under water too long. Normal, healthy human beings get fat if they stay in our obesigenic culture too long, too. As we export our diet and lifestyle around the world, we see just how universal this vulnerability is.  

...continue reading here.

-- David L. Katz, MD, MPH

Detox Cleanse

...speaking of appetite; Tami, Kenz, and I are doing Dr. OZ's 3-day detox cleanse.  We're only on day-1 and still laughing about how we could eat everything in sight - crunchy, salty, sweet...everything.

Will we still be laughing tomorrow?

True Peace

B1G Tourney 2014- LETS GO BLUE!!

Medical Intervention

One study out of Southern Methodist University found that the effects of physical activity on mild to moderate depression were so powerful that the study's author, Jasper Smits, wrote a guidebook urging mental health professionals to actually prescribe exercise as a medical intervention. There are also studies showing how regular physical activity increases cognitive function and brain connectivity. And, conversely, we also know how bad for us a lack of physical activity can be. According to an American Cancer Society study, people with a sitting job are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than those with standing jobs. This is not a new discovery. A 1950s study of people in similar lines of work showed that London bus drivers had a higher incidence of death from cardiovascular disease than bus conductors, and that government clerks had a higher incidence than postal workers.  Read more here....

-- Arianna Huffington

Endless

Love is an act of endless forgiveness.

-- Jean Vanier

Seek Forgiveness

Life has taught me to forgive much, but to seek forgiveness still more.

-- Otto Von Bismarck

Tenacity

"You're not the first one to start again
...
There is something to be said for tenacity"

-- OtR, "The Laugh of Recognition", from The Long Surrender

Q&A: Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Q&A:

 

Q: What prevents capable / driven people from breaking through to the next level?

A: Success

Success becomes a catalyst for failure...
...because success often leads to the undisciplined pursuit of more.

By focusing on a few things that are really essential, we are actually able to make a more valuable contribution. When people really get the chance to think, they can quite easily discern between what is essential and what isn't.

The problem is that we don't have the space to take the time to discern, to think. In a world where we have so much information, we need more time to think, to process, to see the bigger picture.

Have Our Being

In Him we live and move and have our being.

-- Acts 17:28

Over The Rhine - Tonight in South Bend

"Love: let it be not just a feeling, but the broken beauty of what we choose to do."

...songs have a way of nudging us toward the people we want to be.

-- Linford Detweiler, OtR

...must say, my hopes are pretty high for some deep resonance tonight. I want it. I need it.

Improved Cognitive Function

Research shows naps lead to improvement in cognitive function, creative thinking, and memory performance. In particular, napping benefits the learning process by helping us take in and retain information better.

The improved learning process comes from naps actually helping our brain to solidify memories. According to Max Read, "Research indicates that when memory is first recorded in the brain--in the hippocampus, to be specific--it's still 'fragile' and easily forgotten, especially if the brain is asked to memorize more things. Napping, it seems, pushes memories to the neocortex, the brain's 'more permanent storage,' preventing them from being 'overwritten.'"

One study into memory found that participants did remarkably better on a test following a nap than those who didn't sleep at all.

-- Belle Beth Cooper, 5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder

Each Day

Each day provides with us with at least 2 opportunities; a gift to receive and a gift to give.

This thought emerged recently while I was running outside.  I was surrounded by a most brilliant sunshine and a blanket of impeccably white snow.  Blinding.  Breath-taking.  I could taste the beauty.  Gratitude swelled within me, at the opportunity to be there to receive this gift.  I wanted to share it ... not only to tell about it, but to show it to someone else.  The latter followed the former, as it so often does in many areas of life.

We can so often give out of what we have been given.

Adjusts The Sails

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

-- William Arthur Ward

Risk & The Brain

To function effectively the brain needs to prioritize information so it can make decisions about what it needs to focus on at any given time. The human brain is designed to pay conscious attention to four key areas and they are organised in order of priority:

1. Risk
2. Important
3. Pleasurable
4. Engaging

The conscious brain will pay immediate attention if something is a Risk or dangerous, this overrides everything and prioritizes the actions of the person concerned (Risk being 3 times more powerful than the benefits).

-- Sue Barrett

10,000 Ways

I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

-- Thomas Edison

I am particularly interested these days in how things like persistence work in us as human-beings, particularly from a neurological perspective, and it's implications for us behaviorally, emotionally, and spiritually.

In The Dark

God has wisely kept us in the dark concerning future events and reserved for himself the knowledge of them, that he may train us up in a dependence upon himself and a continued readiness for every event.

-- Matthew Henry

Henry captures what has surely been true of my experience ... that there has been great purpose, utility even, in keeping me unaware of certain things, even the future, for a better-timed revealing of them.  Awareness is a healthy thing, but it can also be a hidden (and, sometimes, not so hidden) implementation-bid for control in life.  Leaving us to plummet the depths of our darkest fears seems to create opportunity for illumination.  And, the illumination is, among other things, a right-placed, right-sized dependence on the mercies and wonders of God.

The Indiana woods this morning are basted in another fresh layer of one of nature's more beautiful blankets -- pure white and more soft than really could even be imagined.  Our dog loved it almost as much as me, hardly able to roll in enough of it.

The northern sides of nearly every tree were home to the most delicate accumulations.  I can hardly imagine a design more beautiful, more glorious, more aimed at the love of our Creator for all things beautiful and harmonious.  I know there have been times when I couldn't see it, being pre-occupied with something more desperately needed for myself (or so it seemed).  But, with His graces so pervasive within me, today is another day that I can marvel at all this extravagant beauty.

I am dependent.  I am being given knowledge as it is needed.  The joy of it makes me full of anticipation of what yet is to be revealed, especially when this current darkness seems already so bright.

How Multi-tasking Can Kill Your Relationships

They call it "multi-tasking".  I call it annoying.  When I read about the merits of efficiency and the need to get more things done at once, it is always written from the perspective of the person doing multiple things at the same time.  I have never seen this modern habit described from the point of view of the person interacting with a multi-tasker.

When I walk into a colleague’s office and he is talking to me while simultaneously reading and responding to emails while his eyes dart to his iPhone’s text message alerts . . . I am not impressed with the ability to do several things at once.  Honestly, I get frustrated because I do not believe he is listening to me.  Over time this pattern has grated on me to the point I try to schedule our meetings in a conference room in an effort to disconnect his work station from our conversation.

...

Good things occur when I give God all 5 of my senses. 

-- John Richmond

How did we get from the former thoughts to the latter?  ...Continue Reading