Midlife Health: Go For Dark, Rich and Healthy!

‘Tis the season for CHOCOLATE!  If you’re a fan, this is a great time to indulge because there are so many different chocolate treats being sold for the holidays.  No need to feel guilty because in moderate amounts, chocolate actually has numerous health benefits.

One of its benefits is that it contains flavonoids which act as antioxidants and protect the body from aging. Flavonoids may also help reduce the cell damage that can promote tumor growth.

If you have high blood pressure you’ll be delighted to hear that researchers at the University of Cologne in Germany report that eating DARK chocolate can help lower blood pressure.

Chocolate also:

• Stimulates the production of endorphins which are the “feel-good” chemicals
• Contains serotonin which acts as an anti-depressant
• May decrease your risk of a stroke
• May be good for your heart – increased blood flow, mild anti-clotting effects, reduced plaque formation

To get the most benefit, stick with dark chocolate that contains at least 70% cocoa.  It has many more antioxidants than milk or white chocolate.  I’ve eaten chocolate that is 95% cocoa but that takes a little getting used to!

Don’t wash it down with a glass of milk though.  A report from Italy’s National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research in Rome states that “milk may interfere with the absorption of antioxidants from chocolate … and may therefore negate the potential health benefits that can be derived from eating moderate amounts of dark chocolate.”

How much chocolate should you eat? You’ll be pleased to know that chocolate has a low glycemic index, meaning that it does not cause your blood sugar to spike. However, all things  in moderation!  About an ounce a day is fine.  More than that and you will take in extra calories that you may not want.

If you’re looking for a great recipe, here is one compliments of www.freecoconutrecipes.com  I made this recently and it’s delicious.

Frozen Chocolate Coconut Fudge

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup nut or seed butter  (I used almond butter)
1/4 cup (generous) cocoa powder
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup (generous) coconut oil, melted
1/4 cup raw honey

Mix together all ingredients. Pour on a piece of unbleached parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Spread out to about 1/4″ thick.
Place fudge in freezer. Let set for about 30 minutes.
Break into pieces and serve or put in container back in freezer until you are ready to serve.

Have You Lost Your Reason for Being Born?

As the little children were leaving school one day the teacher asked them to bring in their birth certificates the next day.  As he was about to head off to school with it the next morning, one little boy was cautioned by his mother to be particularly careful with it since it was a very important document.  But unfortunately, by the time he got to class he had lost it anyway.  He began to cry.

Billie answered tearfully, “I lost my reason for being born!”

Have you ever thought that you shouldn’t have been born? Have you made apologies for who you are because you believed that others were better than you? Have you felt like you had nothing to contribute to life?

Nobody on this earth is more or less valuable than you.  We all have gifts to share, no matter how small or how insignificant we might think those are. Perhaps it’s just a smile that brightens someone else’s day.  Sometimes we need to be reminded how significant we are especially during those times when we’re feeling “down and out”.

I recently ended a presentation on the power of our thoughts to shape our life with the following words.  If you’re currently feeling less joyful than you know you can be, perhaps they will lift your spirits.

What will you do with the rest of your life?

… so CHOOSE now …

BECOME CLEAR about who you are
PLANT the seeds of success
CHANGE your thoughts, behaviors and habits
DEVELOP self confidence
BUILD courage
ALIGN yourself with the positive
MOVE forward one step at a time

ENGAGE your heart, not just your mind
REMEMBER that you reap what you sow
STEP outside of your comfort zone
RELEASE the past
MAKE it the life you want NOW

NEVER, EVER give up!

Midlife Wellness: Honey for Healing

Bees make honey when the enzymes in their stomachs react with the nectar of flowers.   It is  made up primarily of glucose together with fructose and is twice as sweet as sugar.   You can substitute 1/2 – 3/4 cup honey for 1 cup of sugar in recipes.

In its raw, unfiltered/minimally filtered state, honey is a concentrated source of essential nutrients such as some minerals, B-complex vitamins and vitamins C, D and E.

Aside from being used for sweetening foods and beverages, honey is also used to promote energy and healing. Germs don’t grow well in honey which makes it a natural antiseptic and a good salve for burns and wounds.

Researchers at the University of Sydney found that when diluted honey is applied to a moist wound, it produces hydrogen peroxide, a known anti-bacterial agent. Further research revealed that honey may be a natural remedy for some of the hospital “superbugs” that are resistant to antibiotics.

Honey has been used for many centuries. The ancient Greeks, the Romans and the Egyptians were great proponents of using the golden gooey stuff. My favorite way to use it is for a sore throat or cough.  I put a teaspoon or so in a cup of hot tea along with some lemon juice.  According to my husband, the brew works much better if you add rum!

Pure, uncontaminated honey is greatly underutilized these days as a healing remedy.  However, there are marked differences in the antibacterial activity of different types of honey. Manuka honey, made by bees in New Zealand, has been found to have the most healing properties of any honey on the market.

A word of warning: NEVER give honey of any type to an infant under one year of age.  In its natural form it can contain spores of the bacteria that cause botulism. This poses no problem for healthy adults and older children unless it happens to be tainted honey smuggled in from China. I was mortified when I read a recent article about “honey smuggling.”  It seems that this honey can contain illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. Not only that, but some products marked as honey have almost no honey in them. They are a mix of sugar water, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, jaggery (coarse unrefined sugar from the sap of certain palm trees), barley malt sweetener or other additives with just a small amount of actual honey.

If you use honey and buy it from a supermarket, I suggest you read the article at http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/08/honey-laundering/

Four Ways to Change

“There are only four ways that you can change anything about yourself, your life, your work, or your relationships with others.” – Brian Tracy, self development author and coach

Brian Tracy says that to change you need to:

Do more of something
Do less of something
Start something
Stop something

We all have things that we would like to do more of but never seem to have the time.  The flip side of that coin is that we find the time to do things that perhaps don’t bring us all that much joy or aren’t of any great value in our achieving goals.  You might want to exercise more, do more yoga, spend more time with family, read more books but can’t fit it into your busy schedule.  On the other hand,  do you watch mindless TV, play hours of video games, spend too much time chatting on the phone?  So why can’t you do less of those things and therefore spend more time on the things you DO want to do.

The same holds true for starting something.  Perhaps you have to stop something in order to start something else.

If you find you are stuck and not moving forward, ask yourself “If I do X, what will that get me?”  For example, if you stop playing video games and read more books about investing, what will that get you? Perhaps that house on the beach when you retire, or a new car because your current one has 250,000 miles on the speedometer and may not last much longer. If the house or the car are important enough, you will stop playing the games and start reading.

If your answer is something that you deeply want or care about, then you WILL find a way to make the change. If you have a passion for something, it will drive you to do whatever is necessary.  If not, then it probably wasn’t all that important in the first place.

Action Steps

What do you need to do more of?
What will that get you?

What do you need to do less of?
What will that get you?

What do you need to begin?
What will that get you?

What do you need to stop?
What will that get you?

Include behaviors and attitudes in your list.
Ask those around you what they think you should stop, start, do more/less of.
Start small. Pick one thing and work on that.
Start today and change your life!

Learn To Dance In The Rain

This was written by Steve Rizzo, a colleague at the National Speakers Association.  Having lived in Hawaii myself for a number of years, I connected to the sentiment...

A few weeks ago I spent four wonderful days at the Four Seasons Hotel in Kona Hawaii, where I had the pleasure of speaking to a wonderful group of Top Sales Performers and spouses of Ameritus Financial.

My job was to give them the tools they need to embrace the changes and intense growth they were currently experiencing and will inevitably continue to experience in the coming years.  I knew the tension was high, but I was prepared.

One morning, two hours before my speech, I was having breakfast at a restaurant with a captivating view of the ocean.  As the waitress was pouring my coffee, I asked, “Why is it that no matter where they are, or what they are doing, Hawaiian people always seem to be happy and at peace with themselves?  Is there some kind of secret that I should know about?   And if there is, can you please tell me?”

She laughed and looked around as if to make sure that no one was listening and in a low voice she replied, “Mr. Rizzo today is your lucky day.  For today I will tell you the secret that most Hawaiian people live by”.  She sat down in the chair next to me, motioned me to get closer and whispered in my ear.  “We learn to dance in the rain”.

Before I had a chance to respond, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a laminated card and handed it to me and said “This is for you.  It really is a secret that should be shared with everyone.”   “Don’t wait for the storms of your life to pass.  Learn to dance in the rain”.

Read that again my friend.  That statement is a touchstone for living a successful, happier life, especially when you are experiencing intense change and growth of any kind.  That in part is the message I shared with the wonderful people of Ameritus Financial.

“Dancing in the rain” is an attitude that truly happy and successful people live by and few dancers come by it naturally.  Can you learn to dance in the rain when the storms of change and misfortune are pouring down on you?   I believe the answer is yes.  It’s a matter of shifting your focus and way of thinking when times are tough that makes the difference.

That is to say, when the storms of life are pouring down on you, you can muster up enough courage to dance and bless the things that life has given you, or, you can drown as you curse your challenges and unfortunate circumstances.   I don’t know about you, but I’ll take dancing over drowning any day!

website: www.SteveRizzo.com

email: steve@steverizzo.com

blog: http://motivational-humor-speaker.blogspot.com

Midlife Paradise: Are You Already There Without Knowing It?

The following words by Voltaire came to mind as I was recently taking a group of people through a retirement/follow your dream workshop:  Paradise is where I am.

At one point in the workshop participants rate nine various areas of their life, on a scale of 0 (totally miserable) to 10 (whoopee, it’s my ideal).  The next portion involves each person listing 15 “must haves” that would make their life ideal. Lists are then swapped with partners, who take each other through the process of coming up with their top five. From here participants are asked to define what success would look like if they were able to live the five “must haves” at a “10” level.

Most people usually have all sorts of ideas of what would make their life ideal but one individual was having difficulty. Each time she thought about what was ideal, she discovered that she, for the most part, was already living her ideal life. 
She had come into the workshop looking for “paradise” only to discover it was where she was.  She had to go through the process and see it in written form to grasp the concept. What an eye-opener!

Are you living in paradise without even knowing it?

Action Steps

1. Take 15 minutes and define what paradise might look like for you.  Really get into the feeling of it.
2. Once you’ve defined it, identify three things you can do within the next week to move you closer to your definition of paradise.

None of us lives in paradise all the time but the more clarity you have as to what it looks and feels like, the greater will be your motivation to spend more time there.

Out-of-the-Box Thinking

Many hundreds of years ago in a small Italian town, a merchant had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to the moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the merchant’s beautiful daughter so he proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo the merchant’s debt if he could marry the merchant’s daughter. Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified by the proposal. The cunning money lender suggested that they let providence decide the matter.

The moneylender told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty bag. The girl would then have to pick one pebble from the bag. If she picked the black pebble, she would become the moneylender’s wife and her father’s debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white pebble she need not marry him and her father’s debt would still be forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail.

They were standing on a pebble strewn path in the merchant’s garden. As they talked, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the sharp-eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick her pebble from the bag.

Now, imagine you were standing in the merchant’s garden. What would you have done if you were the girl? If you had to advise her, what would you have told her? Careful analysis would produce three possibilities:

1. The girl should refuse to take a pebble.

3. The girl should pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself in order to save her father from his debt and imprisonment.

Take a moment to ponder over the story. The above story is used with the hope that it will make us appreciate the difference between lateral and logical thinking. The girl’s dilemma cannot be solved with traditional logical thinking.

Think of the consequences if she chooses the logical answers.

What would you recommend the girl do?

The girl put her hand into the moneybag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it, she fumbled and let it fall onto the pebble-strewn path where it immediately became lost among all the other pebbles.

“Oh, how clumsy of me,” she said. “But never mind, if you look into the bag for the one that is left, you will be able to tell which pebble I picked.”

Since the remaining pebble is black, it must be assumed that she had picked the white one. And since the moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed what seemed an impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one.
— Unknown

LESSON FROM THIS STORY:  Sometimes we twist our minds into a knot trying to find a solution and often believing that there really isn’t one that makes sense.  If we can just let go and think of the problem in a different way, the answer might be right there.

Is there a problem you’re trying to solve? Breathe deeply, ask for the answer, then let it go and allow your creativity to take over.

Lose Weight and Improve Your Brain Power by Getting More Sleep

Turn off the lights!

I’m currently listening to an audio book that describes, in great detail, life in the 1700s.  No television, computers, cell phones or electric light bulbs. People generally went to bed after dark and got up at sunrise. Candles were used but even then people’s sleeping patterns were more in tune with their circadian rhythms than today.  Where people once averaged 10 hours of sleep a night, now the average is around six.

Our modern lifestyle allows us to cram more and more into each day.  Lights that burn day and night, flickering computer and television screens, not only in offices but in bedrooms, and a schedule that often makes getting even 6-7 hours of sleep a luxury. What is this doing to our biochemistry?

A recent paper from Rockefeller University looked at how artificial lighting changes our 24-hour circadian rhythm.  Mice were placed into an environment that had a 20-hour day instead of the standard 24. Six weeks later these mice had gained weight, were more reckless in their behavior and were less flexible mentally than the mice that had stayed on the 24-hour cycle.

Another interesting study, published in the journal Neuroscience, states that when people don’t get enough sleep they tend to make overly optimistic decisions.  This provides scientific evidence for what casino managers have long known — keep the lights flashing and the machines ringing to encourage  people to keep playing until they have lost all their money.

Based on these, and other studies, we may well be playing havoc with our brains, our metabolism and overall body chemistry.  Makes me think that life in the 1700s and before wasn’t so bad, at least when it comes to getting adequate sleep!

Baby Boomer Lifestyle – Conflict Resolution in Retirement

One of the emotional issues facing those of you who are considering retirement is the amount of time you will be spending with your spouse.  When you change from spending 8+ hours a day outside the house at your work to suddenly spending 24 hours a day with your spouse, conflict inevitably comes up. You both have your own interests and agendas.  Sometimes they’re miles apart!

Not only is the conflict unpleasant but it affects your health.  To keep your stress level down and your heart healthy, resolve conflicts by working together to meet the needs of everyone concerned.  Honest communication is the key. Here are some tips that work during the majority of conflicts:

• Take a breath and count to 10.  Breathe slowly and deeply to calm down your emotions if you’re feeling angry.
• Have the intention of working cooperatively toward a resolution or agreement. Focus on the positive not the negative.
• Attack the challenges, not the person.  You are looking for a solution, not trying to be a winner or turn the other person into a loser.
• Don’t waste time on “who started it.” Work together to figure out the next step to remedy the situation.
• Focus on the future not on all the wrongdoings and emotions of the past. Avoid using phrases such as “You always…..”
• Really listen to the concerns of the other person.  Come from the heart and do it without judgement. Agree to give each party a specific amount of time to speak (say10 minutes), without interruption.
• Come from a place of respect. Name calling and unkind words will only escalate emotions on both sides. If you can’t control your emotions, walk away after agreeing to a cool-off period.
• Avoid blaming the other person and take responsibility for your feelings. Start your sentences with “I” rather than “you” and express your emotions. Don’t make the other person guess what you’re thinking or feeling. They’ll inevitably be wrong, causing further conflict.
• Brainstorm some positive solutions by beginning with what you both agree on rather than on what is lacking.  If you look hard enough, you will find something.
• Know your goal.  What do you want the person to do?  How do want them to behave? What are YOUR needs? Be specific.
• Think about where you want to be in five years time.  Will this conflict impact that scenario?  How do you want to remember it?

So take a deep breath, listen, be fair, be flexible and remember that there is always a solution!

Midlife Walking the Walk

Walking the Walk

Walking sideways caught everybody’s eye.
They always said, “Now, there’s a careful guy!”
But, inching along at such a slow rate,
The downside was, I was usually late.

I remember what happened before:
Ups and downs by the score;
But my fears of the unknown creep in,
And oops! I’m walking backward again.

— John Dean Williamsen-speaker, author

Do you find yourself frequently focusing on the past and allowing those thoughts and beliefs to shape your today and your tomorrow?  It’s been estimated that some 70%-80% of our daily thoughts are negative which means that you may be spending a considerable amount of time reliving past negative events. Doing so causes them to become more deeply imprinted in your mind. Isn’t it time to let them go?  Why not imprint positive thoughts.  It’s just as easy; they’re both just thoughts!

Action Step

Become aware of whether your thoughts about past events are positive or negative.

Enjoy the positive ones – they will uplift your energy.

Take your focus off the negative ones by finding something positive in the moment. Be grateful for whatever it is.  The more often you do so, the less you will find yourself pulled back to events that keep you locked in a cycle of negative patterns.