Treat your body, mind, and emotions with the gentle care they deserve.

Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.
- The Buddha

Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Listen hard.
Practice wellness.
Play with abandon.
Laugh.
Choose with no regret.
Appreciate your friends.
Continue to learn.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
- Spanish Proverb

Treat your body, mind, and emotions with the gentle care they deserve.

Further reading: How to Sleep Better

Stress Reduction: Make Healthy Choices to Relieve Stress

12 Ways to De-Stress Your Life

Conscious Breathing to Relieve Stress

Take Time For Yourself

*** Today's picture comes from a set of 14 Inspirational Posters with words and calligraphy by my dear friend Mary Anne Radmacher and art by my wife Suze Stewart Huie. These posters are available at very special prices. To see these inspirational posters, go to
www.dreamthisday.com/inspirational-posters

Feeling Sad Quotes

Regret Quotes

Positive Thinking Quotes and Sayings

Sad Life Quotes

Try Daily Journaling - 7 Hints for Beginning a Rewarding Journaling Practice

If you have never experienced the practice of daily journaling, give it a try. I highly recommend it. When I say "journaling," I am not referring to a diary in which to record the events of your life, I am talking about a place to record your feelings - a friend with whom to share your troubles, fears, hopes, and dreams.

To get the most out of journaling, consider these suggestions:

1. Begin today. Like most everything that is life-enhancing, but optional, the practice of journaling is easy to put off. If you don't start today, you are less likely to begin tomorrow, and by the next day, you will have lost the inspiration forever.

2. Journal every day, preferably at the same time. Habits, whether healthy repetitions or unhealthy addictions, are the backbone of our lives. Support your journaling habit by reenforcing it daily.

3. Write longhand. There is nothing friendly about a computer keyboard. Let the movements of your pen be an extension of your being.

4. Honor yourself with a bound journal book and a smooth-writing pen. Neither has to be expensive, but they should feel good to your touch and inspire you to feel good about yourself and your connection with your words.

5. Just let the words flow. Don't pause, don't edit your thoughts, don't mind your spelling or your grammar, don't re-read what you have written. This is a time to release emotions. While there is value in reading your journal at a later time, the greatest value of journaling is in the writing. I am not recommending that you burn your journal book, but if you did, you would still receive vast benefit from the practice.

6. Fully express your emotions. Everywhere else in life, we censor our feelings. It becomes a habit to pretend that we are not really angry, not really regretful, not really hurt, not really afraid. Your journal is the one friend with whom you can truly share the depth of your emotion. Go ahead and say, "I'm afraid." Go ahead and tell your journal, "I'm panicked," or even "I'm terrified," if that is your feeling at this moment.

7. Write until you are drained. At first, it will seem that you have an endless stream of complaints, but you will be surprised to suddenly reach a moment when you find that you have named every trouble, and you feel drained. That is the moment when an unfamiliar peace descends, and the world appears as an empty canvas rather than as a hostile bully.

Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life - 5 Secrets For Breaking Your Bad Habits

Choose Your Habits, Choose Your Life - 5 Secrets For Breaking Your Bad Habits
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

By nature, we are all creatures of habit. We instinctively adopt familiar routines for most activities. We eat about the same number of meals each day - at more or less the same times. We have a regular pattern of sleeping - unless it is perturbed by illness or shift work. Most everything we do is habitual.

You probably eat three meals each day, but why? Why not two or five? There is nothing particularly "natural" about our pattern of eating three meals each day - it is just a habit that we share with most of those around us. Actually, a number of studies indicate that eating five smaller meals is more satisfying and healthier than eating three large ones.

You will always have habits - things you do regularly and without conscious thought - but you do have the ability to CHOOSE your habits. Here's how...

1. Begin to pay attention to WHAT you do, WHEN you do it, and WHY you do it. One of the bad habits I fell into was eating a large dish of ice cream in the late evening. Obviously, "ice cream" was the "what," but the "when" was more than just "in the evening." "When" was times I felt stressed, hadn't had a satisfying dinner, or was bored. "Why" was mouth sensation, having something to do with my hands, and sometimes hunger.

2. Keep a journal of the "what", "when," and "why." Make an entry whenever you find yourself doing something that isn't really your choice. You will find that you gain better insight into the "when's" and "why's" as you get more entries in your journal. Soon a pattern will emerge that can enable you to find healthy habits to replace the harmful ones.

3. Look for other activities that would satisfy the "when" and "why." A hot bath for stress, hard candy for mouth sensation, a good book for activity, a warm bowl of soup for real hunger.

4. Make the undesirable activity difficult. Don't keep the cigarettes or ice cream in the house. When ice cream was in my own freezer, it was hard to resist, but when eating a dish of super chocolate chunk required a trip to the convenience store, it was much easier to turn my attention to other activities and a low calorie snack - if any snack at all.

5. Begin new habits not only because you need them to replace unhealthy ones, but also because they are the things you always wanted to do, but couldn't find the time or money. That book club or yoga class makes a great substitute for the eating or smoking, and you can more than pay for your health club membership with what you save on cigarettes.

Say NO to Stress: 8 Easy and Powerful Ways - Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Less Stress - More Joy - Making Healthy Choices
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Stress is to your emotional health as junk food is to your physical health. You need a certain amount of food to sustain your life, but overeating and eating the wrong foods are unhealthy and sometimes dangerous.

As you need food to live, you also need a certain amount of emotional stimulation, but unless you choose to live alone far from the reaches of civilization, you are bombarded daily with innumerable stressors (agents, conditions, or other stimuli that cause stress). You hear the daily woes of friends and family. Your job and your daily commute are filled with agitation. Just a few minutes of the 11 o'clock news provides far more than your daily requirement of emotional stimulation.

What to do?

1. Simplify your needs: Much of our stress is due to what we believe we need to have. Actually, we need very little - food, a roof over our head, companionship. The rest is all perceived need that causes stress. As a crazy, but everyday example, we get stressed that we don't have the money to finance a relaxing vacation trip. Suppose we just relaxed every day knowing that we don't need luxuries.

2. Simplify your obligations: Practice saying "NO." No, I won't babysit your parakeet. No, I won't work a double shift Sunday. No, I won't chair the fundraising drive. There is actually almost nothing that you must do. Everything in life is a choice. Break the habit of assuming that you need to do everything you are asked to do.

3. Ask yourself what is the worst that can happen: Usually the worst isn't really so bad. For example, the worst your boss can ever do is to fire you, and if you hate your job, that would be a blessing in disguise.

4. Don't be demanding: You ask someone to do something, they don't do it, and you get upset - raising your stress level. Suppose you asked less of other people? Your stress level would go way down. For example, you want your teenagers to keep their rooms tidy. For them, a structured living space is not a priority. Ask yourself whether exerting your control is worth the high stress level that it causes you.

5. Mentally, prepare for failures: Your boss WILL be critical of your work. Your cell phone and computer WILL fail. The stock market WILL drop. There WILL be another terrorist attack or war. It is just life. If you are mentally prepared, you won't be surprised or get stressed when the inevitable happens.

6. Mind your own business: Many of us get upset - and stressed - over the actions of others that are really none of our business. The lifestyle of others is NOT our business. Whether your adult son or daughter has a job, whether they married the "wrong" partner, whether your neighbor recycles, whether the man down the street watches adult movies or his wife is having an affair - these are NOT our business. Know that there is no single way that life is "supposed" to be. Demanding that life meet our expectations is a sure fire recipe for a miserable existence. Life is a game with no rules. Have NO Expectations of life. Stay in your own business and lower your stress.

7. Be grateful for what you have: Each of us has been infinitely blessed - beginning with the gift of life. Whatever may appear to be missing or broken on any particular day, our glass is not half full, it is 99.9% full. More practically, when we feel ungrateful, we become unhappy and stressed. When we choose to feel and express our gratitude, the act of feeling and speaking our thanks creates a happiness within us. The more we express our gratitude, the more we have for which to be grateful.

8. Make YOU your top priority: Your ONLY responsibility in life is to your own happiness. Lower your stress and raise your joy by focusing on yourself. Today and every day, take time to celebrate your life - whether an hour's meditation in a quiet natural space, or a brief moment's conscious pause to breathe deeply and celebrate gratitude for your life.

May this Holiday Season smile gently upon you and yours, and may the New Year bring you Joy and Health.

May this Holiday Season smile gently upon you and yours, and may the New Year bring you Joy and Health.

Light & Joy,
Jonathan