Developing healthy eating habits early in life can lead to a lifetime of healthy living, so get started today! Involve your children in the menu planning, grocery shopping and food preparation whenever possible. Keep your pantry and refrigerator stocked with affordable choices of fresh, frozen and canned fruit and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, whole grain cereal, pastas and lean meats and alternative protein options. Then slow down and enjoy it all!
While we don’t always look in the right places, wanting to be happy, safe, healthy, and cared for are part of our common nature. Practicing compassion and generosity can be healing and contagious. Listening to each other allows us an opportunity to connect at a basic human level.
We need not shy away from darkness, nor do we need to suppress our journeying through darkness. To ensure that we don’t get stuck in a state of emergency, but rather continue in a state of emergence, we need to bring in the light of wisdom, discernment and inner knowing. This Light combined with the loving energy of creativity, passion, service to others, and joy will help complete our metamorphosis.
Remembrance Day held many surprises this year. I am normally very aware of the time, 11/11, holding that minute in a precious space of gratitude, as I acknowledge all who gave in service. Always I am aware of the conflict, honouring war; fighting for peace. In truth I have never understood the operating principles of this planet very well, not until now that is.
The best way to honour the ones who have fallen in battle this Remembrance Day is to start by creating peace in our own lives through the higher values of respect, compassion, forgiveness and wisdom. From there, we will begin to create peace in the world. Only then will we truly honour their memory.
More and more people are responding to need where they see it. My first experience with these causes of the heart (which Nicholas Kristof recently coined as DIY Foreign Aid) was through the work of my dear friend, Maria Miller, and her friend, Sasha Bilar, who co-founded Toys for Thailand (T4T). T4T provides support for orphaned, abandoned, and refugee Hill Tribe children in remote villages in Northern Thailand.
Each day, our new age of technology and social media are pushing us to live more open and authentically. When I do workshops and speaking engagements on Social Media, the bulk of questions are around image and privacy concerns. While we all have to be vigilant to ensure we are not putting ourselves in harm's way, today's technology is like a karmic accelerator forcing us to speak, write and live open and honestly.
Fresh Air, Exercise, Eco-learning, history and geography all wrapped into one fun outing! That is exactly what the children of Mount Pleasant Elementary School experienced when Gary Dover took them on a guided Fall Nature Walk this week. The walk was part of the Green Team program which promotes environmental literacy and leadership. Helping children connect to nature, along with reducing waste and conserving energy at their school are the main tenets of the program.
As the world watches the Chilean rescues, the positive messages of the tenacity of the human spirit, global community, people helping each other and oneness are reminders to everyone of our true nature. Let's take this moment to reflect on our human essence and try to hold onto this sense of connectedness in the future when our lives feel less harmonious and balanced.
Artists and designers are creatively using others’ castoffs in this economy to create chic, reusable and recycled works of art, including bridal gowns. Transforming dresses, paintings, furniture, homes, trash, or all manner of items into something new, something creative, something else is similar to our own growth and changes in life—using the raw material of our experiences to make new ones is what we do.
