The Contentment Habit

This is an excellent post - and it first appeared here (an excellent site) 

I’ll admit I do it as much as anyone else: see the cool things that others are doing and wish I were doing something cool like that too.

You see great travel photos on Instagram and other social media — people living amazing lives, creating cool things, going on adventures. And instantly, there’s the thought that you should be living a better life.

But this is the wrong habit. It leads to a feeling that your life isn’t good enough, that you aren’t good enough. And the habit doesn’t end: if you pursue a better life, you will always feel that you should be doing more, partying more, creating more, learning more, reading more, traveling more. You can’t possibly do it all, but you’ll always wish you were.
So what’s a better habit? The contentment habit.

What I’ve been learning is that happiness and contentment and greatness isn’t out there. It’s not where everyone else is, even if it seems like it. You can spend your whole life chasing this happiness, contentment, dreams, greatness, coolness, and never reach it. That’s because it’s right where you are now.

Before we talk about that, let’s look at the habits that most of us do.

The Discontentment Habits

Tell me if these habits sound familiar:

• You see people doing great things, traveling, having fun, and wish you were doing something like that too. This never ends, because no matter how much you do, there will always be other people doing still more things that sound really cool. So you’ll never reach the pinnacle of fun and cool and achievement.
• You look at yourself and think that you can improve — get fitter, leaner, more learned, calmer, happier, more productive. This too never ends, because even if you do amazingly at improving yourself, you will never be perfect, and there will always be more to improve. So you’ll never be content, and then you die.
• You feel you could be doing more. You’re rushing around, doing a lot, but there’s always a feeling that you could be doing more. This never ends, because there is always more you could be doing. You can never do everything, so there’s always more that you’re not doing than there is that you are doing.
• You criticize others for what they’re not doing. Your kids, your spouse, your family, your friends … they’re all doing something you think they shouldn’t, or maybe not doing something you think they should. There isn’t happiness in criticizing others, because you’re dissatisfied with life when you’re dissatisfied with other people.

If you find yourself doing any of these things — and I’d bet $1,000 that you do them more than you realize — then it’s a good time to think about whether that habit will ever end, and if it will bring you happiness.

The answer to both questions is no — those habits don’t have an end, and they don’t bring happiness or contentment.

The Contentment Habit

When you catch yourself doing those discontentment habits, by being mindful of your feelings and thoughts during the day … try this instead:

• Stop looking elsewhere for happiness — in what others are doing, in what you should be doing, in what others should be doing but aren’t, in the things you should improve. Happiness and contentment aren’t out there.
• Instead, turn to where you are right at this moment. Pause and feel your body, your breath, and all the sensations surrounding you right now. See how this moment contains so much that you don’t normally notice, if you start paying attention.
• Realize that this moment is enough. All around you, right now, is a moment that is as high quality as any of the possibilities that often enter your mind of what you should be doing or where you should be. Those ideal experiences aren’t of any higher quality than the experience you’re having right now.
• See the wonder in this moment. Right where you are, right now. Notice the amazing things around you, and in you, as if you’re seeing it for the first time ever. Notice the miracle of your body, your mind, your surroundings. How did all this come to be? The building you’re in, or the nature you’re in, didn’t just magically appear — it’s almost as if the world conspired to make this moment happen, and you get to be here to witness it. Awesome!

That’s the contentment habit, and you can do it anytime, anyplace, no matter what you’re doing or who you’re with. It is free, always available, always miraculous. And it never ends.

Have a look at this too - it's interesting!

And this...

These habits make you likeable...

13 Habits of Exceptionally Likeable People

Too many people succumb to the mistaken belief that being likeable comes from natural, unteachable traits that belong only to a lucky few—the good looking, the fiercely social, and the incredibly talented. It’s easy to fall prey to this misconception. In reality, being likeable is under your control, and it’s a matter of emotional intelligence (EQ).
In a study conducted at UCLA, subjects rated over 500 adjectives based on their perceived significance to likeability. The top-rated adjectives had nothing to do with being gregarious, intelligent, or attractive (innate characteristics). Instead, the top adjectives were sincerity, transparency, and capacity for understanding (another person).
These adjectives, and others like them, describe people who are skilled in the social side of emotional intelligence. TalentSmart research data from more than a million people shows that people who possess these skills aren’t just highly likeable, they outperform those who don’t by a large margin.
We did some digging to uncover the key behaviors that emotionally intelligent people engage in that make them so likeable. 

Here are 13 of the best:

They Ask Questions

The biggest mistake people make when it comes to listening is they’re so focused on what they’re going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect them that they fail to hear what’s being said. The words come through loud and clear, but the meaning is lost.
A simple way to avoid this is to ask a lot of questions. People like to know you’re listening, and something as simple as a clarification question shows that not only are you listening, you also care about what they’re saying. You’ll be surprised how much respect and appreciation you gain just by asking questions.

They Put Away Their Phones

Nothing will turn someone off to you like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When you commit to a conversation, focus all of your energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them.

They Are Genuine 

Being genuine and honest is essential to being likeable. No one likes a fake. People gravitate toward those who are genuine because they know they can trust them. It is difficult to like someone when you don’t know who they really are and how they really feel.
Likeable people know who they are. They are confident enough to be comfortable in their own skin. By concentrating on what drives you and makes you happy as an individual, you become a much more interesting person than if you attempt to win people over by making choices that you think will make them like you.
 

They Don’t Pass Judgment 

If you want to be likeable you must be open-minded. Being open-minded makes you approachable and interesting to others. No one wants to have a conversation with someone who has already formed an opinion and is not willing to listen.
Having an open mind is crucial in the workplace where approachability means access to new ideas and help. To eliminate preconceived notions and judgment, you need to see the world through other people’s eyes. This doesn’t require you believe what they believe or condone their behavior, it simply means you quit passing judgment long enough to truly understand what makes them tick. Only then can you let them be who they are.

They Don’t Seek Attention

People are averse to those who are desperate for attention. You don’t need to develop a big, extroverted personality to be likeable. Simply being friendly and considerate is all you need to win people over. When you speak in a friendly, confident, and concise manner, you will notice that people are much more attentive and persuadable than if you try to show them you’re important. People catch on to your attitude quickly and are more attracted to the right attitude than what—or how many people—you know.
When you’re being given attention, such as when you’re being recognized for an accomplishment, shift the focus to all the people who worked hard to help you get there. This may sound cliché, but if it’s genuine, the fact that you pay attention to others and appreciate their help will show that you’re appreciative and humble—two adjectives that are closely tied to likeability.


They Are Consistent

Few things make you more unlikeable than when you’re all over the place. When people approach you, they like to know whom they’re dealing with and what sort of response they can expect. To be consistent you must be reliable, and you must ensure that even when your mood goes up and down it doesn’t affect how you treat other people.

These habits make you smarter!

Which of these 10 ideas can you fit into your daily routine?

1. Be Smarter About Your Online Time

Every online break doesn’t have to be about checking social networks and fulfilling your daily ration of cute animal pics. The web is also full of great learning resources, such as online courses, intriguing TED talks, and vocabulary-building tools. Replace a few minutes of skateboarding dogs with something more mentally nourishing, suggest several responders.

2. Write Down What You Learn

It doesn’t have to be pretty or long, but taking a few minutes each day to reflect in writing about what you learned is sure to boost your brainpower. “Write 400 words a day on things that you learned,” suggests yoga teacher Claudia Azula Altucher. Mike Xie, a research associate at Bayside Biosciences, agrees: “Write about what you’ve learned.”

3. Make a “Did” List

A big part of intelligence is confidence and happiness, so boost both by pausing to list not the things you have yet to do, but rather all the things you’ve already accomplished. The idea of a “done list” is recommended by famed VC Marc Andreessen as well as Azula Altucher. “Make an I did list to show all the things you, in fact, accomplished,” she suggests.

4. Get Out the Scrabble Board

Board games and puzzles aren’t just fun but also a great way to work out your brain. “Play games (Scrabble, bridge, chess, Go, Battleship, Connect 4, doesn’t matter),” suggests Xie (for a ninja-level brain boost, exercise your working memory by trying to play without looking at the board). “Play Scrabble with no help from hints or books,” concurs Azula Altucher.

5. Have Smart Friends

It can be rough on your self-esteem, but hanging out with folks who are more clever than you is one of the fastest ways to learn. “Keep a smart company. Remember your IQ is the average of the five closest people you hang out with,” Saurabh Shah, an account manager at Symphony Teleca, writes. “Surround yourself with smarter people,” agrees developer Manas J. Saloi. “I try to spend as much time as I can with my tech leads. I have never had a problem accepting that I am an average coder at best and there are many things I am yet to learn... Always be humble and be willing to learn.”

6. Read a Lot

OK, this is not a shocker, but it was the most common response: Reading definitely seems essential. Opinions vary on what’s the best brain-boosting reading material, with suggestions ranging from developing a daily newspaper habit to picking up a variety of fiction and nonfiction, but everyone seems to agree that quantity is important. Read a lot.

7. Explain it to Others

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” Albert Einstein said. The Quora posters agree. Make sure you’ve really learned what you think you have learned and that the information is truly stuck in your memory by trying to teach it to others. “Make sure you can explain it to someone else,” Xie says simply. Student Jon Packles elaborates on this idea: “For everything you learn—big or small—stick with it for at least as long as it takes you to be able to explain it to a friend. It’s fairly easy to learn new information. Being able to retain that information and teach others is far more valuable.”

8. Do Random New Things

Shane Parrish, keeper of the consistently fascinating Farnam Street blog, tells the story of Steve Jobs’ youthful calligraphy class in his response on Quora. After dropping out of school, the future Apple founder had a lot of time on his hands and wandered into a calligraphy course. It seemed irrelevant at the time, but the design skills he learned were later baked into the first Macs.
The takeaway: You never know what will be useful ahead of time. You just need to try new things and wait to see how they connect with the rest of your experiences later on. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future,” Parrish quotes Jobs as saying. In order to have dots to connect, you need to be willing to try new things—even if they don’t seem immediately useful or productive.

9. Learn a New Language

No, you don’t need to become quickly fluent or trot off to a foreign country to master the language of your choosing. You can work away steadily from the comfort of your desk and still reap the mental rewards. “Learn a new language. There are a lot of free sites for that. Use Livemocha or Busuu,” says Saloi (personally, I’m a big fan of Memrise once you have the basic mechanics of a new language down).

10. Take Some Downtime

It’s no surprise that dedicated meditator Azula Altucher recommends giving yourself space for your brain to process what it’s learned—“sit in silence daily,” she writes—but she’s not the only responder who stresses the need to take some downtime from mental stimulation. Spend some time just thinking, suggests retired cop Rick Bruno. He pauses the interior chatter while exercising. “I think about things while I run (almost every day),” he reports. 

READ MORE

How to form a habit

This is a blog about habits. One of them is - surely - honesty so in that spirit I stole (but accredit) the below from here.

 How a habit is born

You probably already know what a habit is (heck, you probably have a few of your own) but here’s a basic definition: a habit is behavior that an individual performs over and over again, sometimes automatically. But what turns a behavior into a habit?


Charles Duhigg, who wrote “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business”, thinks that habits are reinforced by a three-part loop: trigger, behavior, and reward. The trigger tells you—consciously or unconsciously—to start the behavior, the behavior is the habit or action, and the reward is the benefit that you get from that action. You can see the loop: That coveted reward teaches us to continue the behavior, over and over again, until it turns into a habit.

So, whether you’re trying to break a habit or start a new one, Duhigg suggests isolating triggers and rewards, then experimenting with them. Recent research on habit formation backs up Duhigg’s strategy, showing that consistent contexts (i.e. triggers) increase the likelihood of picking up a new habit, and that people who associated positive feelings with the behavior were more likely to repeat it. With the basic framework of how habits develop, we can define some strategies for creating a new one.

Decide on a habit

Like any major undertaking, habit formation starts with a plan. Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project” says that the habit you design should be super-specific for the best chance at success. In other words, instead of simply trying to drink more water—a nebulous goal—set up a routine where you aim to drink one 8-oz glass of water every day with your lunch at 12:30 p.m.

Rubin is arguing for using micro-quotas, which Gregory Ciotti says act as building blocks for larger, long-term macro-goals. Think of it this way: If your ultimate goal is to run a marathon, starting with a micro-quota like running a half-mile per day can help form a habit, and eventually that micro-quota will cascade into longer runs in the future. Make sure that your habit has realistic standards, and that the macro-goal is something you’re passionate about—don’t make this a New Year’s resolution situation.

Why shooting for the smallest possible goals works

When the most-desired habits are huge, life-altering modifications—eating healthier, running more, waking up earlier—it feels weird to think small. But Ciotti’s concept of micro-quotas makes habits easy to start, and easy to incorporate into our set routines. Leo Babauta of Zenhabits points out that you might complete a big habit a few times, but that your motivation is not a sustainable resource, and that laughably simple changes are easier to keep up.

So instead of willing yourself into a giant change, construct a dead-simple action that painlessly slots into your day, like doing three sit-ups or reading one paragraph of a book. Director of Stanford’s Persuasive Tech Lab, BJ Fogg views habits on a spectrum of motivation versus effort: the higher the effort, the more motivation required. So if you make something insanely easy to accomplish, the human mind sees it as a no-brainer. On the other hand, if your task is difficult and non-specific, like losing 50 pounds, your motivation is going to disappear as soon as you hit a small roadblock.

The thought here is that by starting small and integrating the behavior into your everyday life, a habit can start to take shape, which will snowball into larger life changes. For example, if you resolve to eat one baby carrot per day, eventually you’ll say “I’m already eating one, why not two?”
One measly baby carrot? Seriously, think that small: one push-up per day can motivate your brain past the starting line, and into a 30-minute workout.

Turn simple behaviors into rituals

One of the quickest ways to integrate a new habit into your day is to chain the unfamiliar behavior with an existing one. This strategy is called making an if-then plan: if I do a specific activity, then I do this other new activity. Eventually these if-then chains develop into routines that happen almost automatically, with little-to-no motivation needed.
You may not think about it, but I bet you already have a bedtime ritual: put on pajamas, wash your face, brush your teeth, use mouthwash, plug in your phone, set an alarm. If you want to make a habit out of flossing, make brushing your teeth a trigger, so if you brush your teeth, then you must floss.
The trigger can be anything, as long as it’s something you already do daily. Fogg, for example, used peeing—yes, peeing—as a trigger and chained that to his new habit, push-ups. Combine this with those bite-sized goals, and the mental resistance to your new habit will bottom out—Fogg started with just two push-ups after every bathroom visit.

Photo Courtesy of Helmuts Guigo

Repeat for best results

Whether you’re a pro athlete, best-selling author, or just someone who neglects his or her running shoes a bit too often, repetition is the key to quality. In fact, strong habits can help us automate mental processes that would usually take up our attention, allowing our brains to focus on other more difficult tasks simultaneously—creative, technical, or otherwise. So if you’re repeating a behavior in the same context over and over again, you can form a habit while also trending towards mastery of that skill. Herbert Lui at Medium assembled a great group of real-life examples where accomplished artists and athletes—like Kanye and Kobe—used repetition to hone their craft.

Just get started

There’s an established principle in psychology called the Zeigarnik effect. Basically, the idea states that if you leave a task incomplete, it’s going to stick in your brain until you finish it. Call it closure, commitment, whatever: We’re wired to finish what we start. So when developing a habit, tiptoeing past the starting line might be the most important part.
Ciotti (of macro-goals fame, above) used this strategy to “get over the hump” and trick himself into working out: he set his sights low to get started, which spurred a “might as well” kind of motivation. That craving for completion has been scientifically tested, too: Researchers at the University of Mississippi showed that once students started a puzzle, they stuck around to finish it even after they were paid and told they could leave. This dovetails nicely with the idea of making your habit as basic and effortless as possible.
Just dipping a toe in the waters of your new behavior can help you sidestep the biggest barrier to habit formation: starting. The Zeigarnik effect can even help you break your procrastination habit.

Stick to it

Even with the right strategies in place, changing your predisposed habits is no easy task. Stay disciplined by keeping yourself accountable for the goals that you set. Track your failures so that you understand why your habit didn’t click, but also take time to celebrate your successes as a form of reinforcement.

When you aren’t getting the results you want, try switching up the trigger that you’re chaining your new behavior to, or reevaluating whether or not your habit is simple enough to stick. Don’t get discouraged if your target habit doesn’t feel like second nature after a few weeks: The average time it takes to solidify a new habit is around 66 days.

Conclusion

By understanding a little bit about the way your brain forms habits naturally, you can start to identify new habits that you want to form and build a plan for integrating them into your life. From a psychological standpoint, try distilling your habit into its simplest form, and combining it with things that you’re already doing during your day-to-day routine.
With enough repetition, even complicated tasks can become an automatic part of your schedule.

Prevent sickness

1. Focus on Vitamin D (but NOT in "fortified" foods or synthetic forms in pills)
 
 
If you get your vitamin D levels tested, you generally want to be between 40-80 ng/ml. Once you get above 50 ng/ml, that's where the real benefits start to happen with a maximized immune system and balanced hormones.

You might be surprised to know that MOST people have low vitamin D levels (especially in the winter), and a lot of people are surprised to find that they could be dangerously low.  Some people I know who thought they were reasonably healthy actually had levels below 20 ng/ml (one friend's level was measured at a shockingly dangerous 11 ng/ml), which is a range that could severely limit your immune system and hormone balance (and explains the frequent colds and hormone problems that they were having).

Personally, I found out that my winter levels a couple years ago were lower than I thought (around 35 ng/ml despite taking cod liver oil a couple times a week) and then after getting a few months of summer sun, my levels had jumped up to 52 ng/ml by the end of July, which is much healthier.  This was without any Vitamin D supplements as I wanted to get a good idea of where my levels stood from just food intake and sunshine as my sources. 
Keep in mind though that I'm an avid hiker and mountain biker in the summer, and I live at high elevation (7500 feet above sea level), so I get a good deal of daily sun, which is why my levels jumped from 35-52 ng/ml after a couple months of daily summer sun.  For people that are in offices daily, you'll still most likely need supplemental Vitamin D3 to keep blood levels of vitamin D from dropping too low.

When it comes to Vitamin D, you need to be careful about artificial forms of vitamin D in many vitamin pills, as artificial vitamin forms are almost always either ineffective or possibly even detrimental compared to natural forms.  Vitamin D2 is generally the artificial version in multi-vitamins, although natural D2 does exist in some foods like mushrooms.  Natural Vitamin D from either cod liver oil and/or an oil-based D3 supplement are the best options in my opinion for the times of the year you're not getting enough sun. 

Personally, this is the oil-based D3 supplement that I take during the winter now and also on days in the summer if I happen to go a few days without any sun.  I alternate this oil-based D3 supplement with a fermented cod liver oil throughout the winter, so that I get good natural vitamin D from various sources.

Keep in mind that it's best to get your vitamin D naturally from the sun if you can.  The sun is the absolute best source of vitamin D, and leads to a powerful strengthening of your immune system when your body can naturally produce Vitamin D from moderate sun exposure.  When the UVB rays (not UVA rays) from mid-day sun hit your skin, it reacts with oils in your skin to produce vitamin D that is slowly adbsorbed by your body.  Note that sunscreens block the ability of your body to produce vitamin D, and most sunscreens also contain carcinogenic chemicals that absorb into your blood stream. 

I know not everybody can take a tropical vacation every winter, but if you can, it's best to try to take it right smack dab in the middle of the winter (when your vitamin D levels have dropped to their lowest)... getting even a few days to a week of good sun closer to the equator in the middle of winter can really help increase your vitamin D levels and strengthen your immune system for at least several weeks after the trip.

Remember that this does NOT mean getting burned in the sun... it means getting a moderate amount of sun on large portions of your body (not just your face) for approx 15-40 minutes per day WITHOUT sunscreen on (since sunscreen blocks the UV rays that directly stimulate the vitamin D production in your body).   Also, as a warning about sunscreens, see this article here about why sunscreens can possibly cause cancer and increase body fat.
Everybody is different based on their skin tone... very pale skin tones may only need 10-15 minutes or so in full sun in the middle of the day to get adequate vitamin D before any skin damage occurs, but darker skin tones may need a slightly longer time (sometimes 40-60 minutes) in the sun to produce adequate vitamin D.  To protect your skin, it's essential to get enough sun without sunscreen on, but NOT get burned. 

In general, the UVB rays are only strongest from about 10 am to 3 pm to trigger Vitamin D production in your body (depending on time of year, latitude, and altitude).  For example, in NY city, while you may be able to produce vitamin D in your skin between 9am to 4pm in June or July, that time frame when UVB rays are strong enough might have shrunk to only 11am to 1pm by the end of September... and by late October in NYC, according to charts of sun height in the sky, you can't produce any vitamin D even in mid-day sun as the sun is too low in the sky and UVB rays too weak.

With that said, I understand that a tropical vacation in the winter is not possible for everybody's schedule based on either work or finances, so...
Since you may not be going on a tropical vacation this winter, how can you still keep Vitamin D levels from falling dangerously low in your body?

Well, the best food sources of natural Vitamin D are egg yolks (from hens fed a healthy diet and allowed to get their own sunshine), fatty fish such as salmon and mackerel, organ meats, and some mushrooms (some portobella mushrooms and maitake mushroom are fairly good sources of vitamin D, although the type of vitamin D in mushrooms might not be the best utilized source in your body).  However, keep in mind that it's tough to get enough vitamin D in the winter from food sources alone.

But what I do to make sure I'm at least getting a decent amount of the best absorbed vitamin D is to take a moderate dose of fermented cod liver oil daily in the winter to make sure my vitamin D levels don't fall too low.  Make sure to take only small to moderate doses of cod liver oil, as large doses can possibly give you an overdose of Vitamin A.  
What I've done lately is to only take cod liver oil about 3 days per week, to prevent taking in too much vitamin A.  On the other 4 days per week (only in the winter), I take an oil-based vitamin D3 supplement. It's important to choose an oil-based D3 supplement as it's better utilized by your body.

I'm also a big fan of Prograde Nutrition's natural VGF-25 multi-vitamin, which derives it's vitamin D from natural fish liver oil instead of a synthetic form of vitamin D.  All of the other vitamins in VGF-25 (which stands for "25 veggies, greens, and fruits") are naturally derived too instead of most multi-vitamins that you find at your corner store that are synthetic.
By the way, fortified milk has added synthetic vitamin D, so it is NOT a good source.  In fact, I don't trust any "fortified" foods at all, including terribly unhealthy breakfast cereals which claim to be good sources of vitamin D... not so!  Also make sure to read this article, which explains how our food supply has been modified in recent decades and now lacks the vitamin D that it used to contain decades ago.

2. Garlic to strengthen your immune system!

Garlic is one of the most potent of all superfoods!  Not only does high dose garlic go back thousands of years for treatment of sickness, but recent studies back up the legendary claims for garlic boosting your immune system.

What's best though -- "aged" garlic pills, whole garlic in foods, capsules, etc?  I can't seem to find a consensus on this one, so what I simply try to do is use a variety of sources, including garlic powder on a lot of my foods, fresh chopped garlic in meals, and also a garlic capsule or two each day.

If I feel a possible cold or sickness coming on, I really start loading garlic into my foods heavily and I take a few extra garlic capsules that day too. 

3. Kombucha tea, Kefir, Fermented foods (and other sources of probiotics) strengthen your immune system

Kombucha tea is a fermented tea (naturally effervescent) that contains billions of friendly gut organisms (probiotics) that help to strengthen your immune system by bolstering your levels of good organisms in your gut, which provides a first level of defense against pathogens from things you ingest.

Remember that 70% of your immune system lies in your gut flora and the health of the friendly organisms in there to protect you against pathogens and sickness.
You can find bottles of Kombucha tea or other probiotic drinks at health food stores such as Whole Foods. 

Kefir is a cultured/fermented dairy drink that's been used for thousands of years as a health elixer in many parts of the world.  Kefir is an even better source of probiotics than Kombucha tea, but keep in mind that variety is best when it comes to probiotics, so use various sources for the best benefits to your digestive system and immune system.  Kefir is also the easiest form of dairy to digest due to the pre-digestion that's done by the probiotic microorganisms, and due to this, kefir is generally 99% lactose free.  Read this article to see why Kefir is a more powerful source of gut-friendly probiotics than yogurt.

When I feel any sickness coming on, I start loading up on Kombucha tea and Kefir, drinking them both throughout the day.  I've started seeing other probiotic drinks on the market recently too, so just make sure to look for one that has very minimal sugar per serving (3-6 grams per 8 oz serving is acceptable, but much more than that is too sugary).  Kevita is one brand of probiotic drink that is really delicious and has minimal sugar, while also containing around 8-10 Billion organisms per bottle I believe.

You can also get beneficial probiotics from fermented foods such as sauerkraut (non-canned), yogurt, kimchi, and other fermented foods.  There are also plenty of probiotic supplements you can take, one of which is a delicious drink called Athletic Greens, which contains 7 Billion probiotics per serving among 76 other superfood ingredients.  I start off every morning with this superfoods drink mixed with fresh squeezed lemon and unsweetened iced tea... Great stuff!

Another probiotic product that I personally take is called Pro-x10 and is one of the most powerful probiotics I've come across yet, with the equivalent of 50 Billion probiotics, and a micro-encapsulation technology that gets more live probiotics to your intestines, so they don't die in your stomach.

4. Green tea, Chamomile Tea, and other teas

There is evidence that green tea and chamomile tea can help aid in strengthening the immune system.

Even if the effect is small, you can't go wrong because both are loaded with powerful antioxidants unique to each tea.

For that reason, I try to drink a couple cups of green tea with a small bit of raw honey early in the day, and then at night, I have a couple cups of chamomile or mint tea.
This isn't a bad idea even for a regular habit, but it's even more important when you feel a sickness possibly coming on.  I also drink a lot of other teas too such as Rooibos tea, which is thought to be even higher in antioxidants than green tea.
  5. Loading up on antioxidants

We already know how important antioxidants are to overall health as well as immune system support.
For this reason, I make sure to really load up on antioxidant-rich fruits, berries, teas, red wine, unsweetened organic cocoa (in smoothies, etc), and veggies to help prevent sickness.
Sometimes I make what I call my "Superhuman smoothie", which I believe can really bolster your immune system, with loads of powerful antioxidant-rich berries, a few veggies, raw cacao, maca, spirulina, chia seeds, and any other superfoods I can think to throw in there.
 
6. Light exercise (yes - light exercise, not hard)

When you feel a sickness coming on, a super-high intensity workout is not a good idea, as hard training forces the body to do a lot of recovery, this at a time when your body needs all of it's efforts on trying to fight off the oncoming sickness.

Although I usually recommend high intensity training most times... when sickness might be coming on, it's just a good idea to get some light exercise instead.

Personally, I like to get outside for some fresh air and go for a hike or go snowshoeing in the winter. These aren't very strenuous for me, so they won't cause my body to be forced to do a lot of recovery... but just getting out in the fresh air and getting the circulation going I feel is good to help the body fight off the sickness.

7. Avoid ALL processed foods, wheat-based foods, and sweetened soft drinks

If you're serious about your health and getting lean for life, this should be an everyday rule for you anyway (except maybe for cheat meals)...

However, when you might have a sickness coming on, this is no time to bombard your body with processed foods, inflammatory omega-6 oils (soybean oil, corn oil, etc), fried foods, high fructose corn syrup, refined sugars, wheat-based foods or chemical additives.
All of these force your body to do extra work to deal with all of this junk and the internal inflammation that they cause in your body.  And by the way, grain-based foods like bread, cereal, muffins, pasta, and bagels are a big culprit in causing internal inflammation and disrupting normal gut function, so avoid grains as much as possible.  In case you're new to the science of Paleolithic nutrition, humans don't actually need grains to survive...grains were never a part of the ancient human diet until agriculture came around only about ten thousand years ago. If you haven't seen this article yet, here are 11 reasons why whole wheat damages your body.

Instead, (especially when you might be getting sick) you need to give your body only wholesome unprocessed foods that are only 1 ingredient and that we were meant to digest most efficiently...fruits, berries, veggies, eggs, nuts, seeds, grass-fed meats, etc.

More here

Improve digestion

Much, though not all, the below is from this excellent site.

When eating, consider making these very easy changes to ensure digestion goes much more smoothly and so you feel much better following mealtime.

Chew your food thoroughly

 

  Digestion begins as soon as food enters your mouth. As you chew, you mechanically break down your food. Enzymes are secreted from the salivary and parotid glands, which begin to break the food down chemically.

Most people chew their food between 7 and 14 times per mouthful, which is a bit shy of the 30 to 50 times per mouthful suggested in order to mix the food with saliva to ensure optimal digestion.

As a result of our poor chewing habits, the first stage of digestion is compromised, which makes it more difficult for the second stage to complete its job effectively.

Avoid drinking water, juice, milk, or alcohol while eating

A common habit during meals is to consume some type of beverage, most often water, milk, juice, or alcohol. This has become a customary habit that has directly interfered with the digestive process (cold beverages interfere even more).

Water and most other beverages should be consumed 30 minutes or more before a meal and should be avoided after until food had properly digested. This is due to the fact that they interfere with stomach acid and therefore hamper that second stage of digestion. Add in complicating factors like sugars in juice, milk, and alcohol, and the digestive process becomes even more compromised.

If you drink anything shortly before or at mealtime, make it an enzyme and probiotic rich beverage like kefir or apple cider vinegar, and limit it to a few ounces.

Improve your food combinations

Not only do we need to watch the types of food we eat, we also need to watch the types of foods we combine together, as good foods may make for a terrible combination and there will be a sacrifice in the digestive process.

Some common food combining rules include:

• Eat fruits or sugary foods on their own, on an empty stomach.
• Eat animal protein with non-starchy vegetables
• Eat grains or starchy foods with non-starchy vegetables
• Eat fermented foods with any meal to aid in digestion

Following these general rules will ensure a much more efficient digestive process.

Resist the temptation to overeat

Sometimes the food is just too good to stop eating, and this is especially prevalent during the holiday season when we tend to overindulge in all the dishes and treats set before us. At times like these, it’s important to exercise some restraint and spread out your food intake so that you don’t overload your digestive system.

A good rule is to eat until you are about 80% full, leaving 20% available for digestion. This way you don’t overburden your digestive system and leave food undigested, which will render a toxic reaction that will further affect your digestion in the future.

To learn more about what may be causing you digestive problems and how to resolve them, read Digestive System Disorders – 5 Reasons You Have Them.

Sources:
http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com
http://www.naturalnews.com

Morning habits

Good morning….  I've got a question for you…

What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you wake up? 

i.e. What do you have to do today?

• What's for breakfast?(Why not exercise in a fasted state? Intermittent fasting anyone?)
• lunches to be packed …(No bread...please)
• school uniform to be ironed …
• after school activities to get to … 
• work …
• dinner – who's coming for dinner …
• which friend of your child/children is coming home with you…

I get it, the endless chores… the stress starts to mount at the beginning of the day.

Rather than going with the stress flow, how would you like to start your day happy, full of energy and so have less stress? 

Yes, you can… it starts when you make a conscious choice on how you WOULD like your day to look. 

Can I suggest – start the day doing something just for yourself instead. When you are feeling great, connected to yourself and happy, your approach changes. When you are happy, you will be sharing your "happy energy" with your family and anyone around you. 

So here are five things that would greatly benefit you that you can do before getting out of bed: 

1. Set your intention for your day

Your first thoughts of the day are important, as they will set the tone of your day ahead. Intention establishes a direction of energy and activates the experiences you want. So when you set your intentions from a place of clarity and presence, you set your energy in motion and the environment for the intentions to manifest the way/how you want it. 

2. Journaling 

Have a pen and your journal on your bedside table, and journal in the morning while your mind is fresh and relaxed.  Journaling is one of the most useful tools to help clear your mind daily. It helps reconnect with yourself, processes change and uncovers insights about what is emerging in your life, and so you can understand who you are and what you want in life. 

3. Morning stretches and exercise(Check our the Exercise label on this blog - never forget your biomechanics)

I am not the best model for exercise; however, I will aim to get the stretches done. For a winter morning, you can do stretches in bed, just stretch and release all the tensions in the body.

Extend your daily stretches and exercises when you get out of bed. Any movement that encourages you to connect to your being, feeling stronger and allowing the blood to circulate will make you feel more joyful and happier in the day. 

4. Mentally list 1-3 things that you are grateful for

Every night before you head to bed, think of one thing that you are grateful for. Use that opportunity to remind yourself about the many beautiful things in your life, your work, home, family… And every morning before you get out of bed, again think about something that you are grateful for.

Gratitude will turn your day into more joy and happiness, and turn life challenges into opportunities for growth and blessings. Gratitude grounds you in the present and provides an opportunity to be in touch with your core. 

5. This is my favourite – connection with your spouse

I would really like to encourage you to make 15 minutes every morning to devote to your spouse.

Why?

When you are in your twenties and before children, you would have had your own careers to pursue, great carefree interesting pursuits, a decent disposable income to do whatever you wanted, and the chance to travel whenever you wanted. When you start a family, you may take on the role of the caregiver, and your spouse may take off with their career. Two of you may be walking different paths for a while.  However, you and your spouse need to be mindful that you should not forget about your lives as a couple. The easiest and best way is to have breakfast together – even for 15 minutes, for solid quality time together.

Have a connected day with yourself. Remember, self care is NEVER selfish.

Make a point of reading this blog every day!!!

Fail to keep habits?

MYTH 1 We fail to change our habits — or start good new ones — because we lack willpower.

Not really, said Wendy Wood, a professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California. Willpower, she said, is more about looking at those yummy chocolate chip cookies and refusing them. A good habit ensures you’re rarely around those chocolate chip cookies in the first place.

To create or change a habit, you have to think much more about altering your environment and patterns of living than work on steeling your mind, Professor Wood said, because “behavior is very much a product of environment.”

Habits — at least good ones — exist so we don’t have to resist temptation all the time. Imagine if every morning you had a debate with yourself about eating cake or cereal for breakfast. Instead, most of us form the habit of eating something relatively healthy for breakfast, which bypasses the lure of the cake altogether.

That’s why it’s sometimes easiest to start or break a habit during a major transition. This may sound counterintuitive, but a new house, job or relationship breaks old patterns, said Gretchen Rubin, author of the forthcoming book, “Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives.”

“People say wait a few days to get settled, but don’t,” she said. “Start right away."

MYTH 2 We fall back on bad habits when stressed. In fact, good habits persist even in times of high anxiety, Professor Wood said. A study of which Professor Wood was one of the co-authors found that students who already had unhealthy diets would eat junk food when stressed, but those who already had the habit of eating well — or of reading a newspaper or of going to the gym — were just as likely to do that.

MYTH 3 It takes about 21 days to break or make a habit.

That number seems to have cropped up in the 1960s and somehow became “fact” with no real proof. But in 2009, researchers in Britain decided to take a deeper look by studying how long it took participants to learn new habits, such as eating fruit daily or going jogging. The average was 66 days.

But individuals’ times varied greatly, from 18 days to 245 days, depending on temperament and, of course, the task involved. It will most likely take far less time to get into the habit of eating an apple every afternoon than of practicing the piano for an hour a day.

MYTH 4 You need positive thinking to break or make a habit.

“We find positive fantasy is not helpful and may even be hurtful when trying to reach a desired future or fulfill a wish,” said Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg.

Over years of research, she discovered that people need to pair optimistic daydreams about the future with identifying and imagining the obstacles that prevent them from reaching that goal — something she calls mental contrasting.

Say you want to stop being a procrastinator. The first step is easy. Imagine how it will feel if your work is completed with plenty of time to spare, if you can sleep instead of pulling an all-nighter, said Professor Oettingen, author of “Rethinking Positive Thinking.”

But don’t just resolve to stop procrastinating. The second step is to identify what holds you back from changing yourself. Is it fear that you won’t succeed? Is it the adrenaline rush of frantically working at the last minute? Is it because of negative feelings toward a boss or teacher?

The mental contrasting needs to be in the right order. It’s important to “experience our dreams, then switch gears and mentally face reality,” Professor Oettingen said.

Doing it the opposite way — imagining the obstacles and then fantasizing about changing habits — doesn’t seem to work as well, research shows.

MYTH 5 Doing things by rote, or habit, isn’t good in most cases. It’s better to be mindful of everything we do.

Research shows that most people repeat about 40 percent of their activities almost every day.

“We only have so much room in our brain,” said Ian Newby-Clark, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Guelph in Canada. “It would be incredibly taxing if we had to mindfully plan every step of our day.” Habits free us up so we can think about other things.

And while some habits are objectively bad — smoking, say, or being consistently late — most are subjective. “Habits are only good or bad to the extent they’re consistent or inconsistent with your goals,” Professor Wood of U.S.C. said. It’s a bad habit when “it starts interfering with other goals you have.”

For example, many people said their resolution this year was to cut down the time they spend online.

But why? Because it’s an inherently bad thing to do? Or is it an obstacle to spending more time reading books or riding a bike or learning to knit?

After thinking about it, you may choose to spend less time on your computer or phone. Or you might decide it’s not so terrible in limited doses and shed the habit of feeling guilty about it.

MYTH 6 Everything in moderation.

“There’s a real difference among people about how easily they adapt to habits,” Ms. Rubin said. Some see habits as liberating; some see them as a trap. Some prefer to make a huge change all at once; others proceed step by step.

“I’m in the small minority that loves habits,” Ms. Rubin said, adding that she tends to find it easier to abstain from certain things altogether. For example, she eats no carbohydrates.

“People said I was doomed to failure, but it’s not true,” she said. But, she noted, “it’s a mistake to think the abstainer is more disciplined. For me it’s easier to be an abstainer than have to deliberate each time whether I can eat something or not. Others would go nuts if they abstain.”

That’s why you shouldn’t listen to people who tell you you’re doing it wrong if it works for you, she said.

Also, people shouldn’t fear that their habit will dissolve if they don’t practice it daily.

“If you lapse once or twice, you’re not ruined,” Professor Wood said. “That’s a misconception.”

And that leads to ...

MYTH 7 Shame and guilt keep you on track.

No. People need to be kinder to themselves, showing self-compassion if they lapse, Ms. Rubin said. But it’s a fine balance between treating yourself kindly and making endless rationalizations and excuses.

“I might mindfully make an exception,” she said, such as choosing to eat a traditional Christmas cake every year. “But I’m not making excuses in the moment: I’ll hurt the hostesses’ feelings. You only live once. It’s the holidays.”

One last piece of advice: If you want to be in better shape, get a dog. Professor Wood said studies show dog owners have lower body mass indexes. But here’s the catch: That’s only true if you walk the animal.

Read more...