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  • Blog Challenge Day 2

    This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 2 which is essentially discovering my why for leading a freedom lifestyle.

    I tend to not like the term freedom lifestyle. Maybe it’s because I am a US citizen and freedom gets thrown around so much in politics that it has lost any meaning for me. I know what freedom is for me – but to listen to the news you would think everybody’s “freedom” is being taken away from them. [Anyway I’m not going into politics right now as that’s another post – or book.]

    Why I want to live what I think is meant by a freedom lifestyle is because I will have more time to help people if I’m not so concerned about daily things that seem to need being taken care of.

    In my mind, a freedom lifestyle is one where I can stop looking at price tags. That means if something needs to be taken care of I can call someone and get it taken care of. Or I can do it myself without wondering what else needs to be done that has a higher priority. Also I’m getting a lot older and I haven’t got that many years left to again reach this lifestyle. I’ve had the lifestyle in the past and lost it and I want it back again – so that’s a good reason. By doing my why, I will also have an impact because I will be able to do what I’ve always been doing which is helping people be healthy and psychologically well developed.

    This why has basically been the same for decades.
    I stray away from it but I get back to it!
    I ignore it but it gets back to me.

    I want everyone to live the most healthy, optimally developed life that they can. I’m a developmental psychologist with a major interest in nutrition and I have been on this path since the 1960’s. I’ve talked about, and written about, things that help babies and children develop -and over the years I’ve gotten very much more interested in writing about and studying healthy aging.

    This seems to be my basic why because it’s the thing I keep coming back to. Aging is part of the human developmental cycle and as I’ve gotten older I’m more interested in the older end of it [but I do pay attention to what is going on at the beginning end of it or the beginning start of it.]  

    My positive impact will be to have people recognize that they can start today to be healthy. It doesn’t have to have started back before you were born it can start today.

    No matter how old you are you can always get better at your health and your psychological development.

    Thoughts? Comments? Thank you!

  • Dealing With Challenges: Day 1

    This blog post is in response to Natalie’s 10 Day Freedom Plan Blog Challenge Day 1 which is to take some time to think about your biggest challenges, then list down 2-3 of them and write a few lines about why you think they are holding you back.

    Continue Reading
  • One Is Never Too Old To X, Y, or Z

    Had a birthday back in January. “Some might say” that I am old or too old to be doing what I do. If you know me you know that I am now closer to 80 than I am to 70. And as is usual for many, after a birthday and a beginning of a year, I start thinking about past, present, and future. .

    This year I decided I was making major changes!
    Clearing out old patterns and creating new ones!

    Age is NEVER a factor in these decisions!

    cleaning out the brain

    I have trouble sticking with projects through to finishing. I also have problems with dark and light. I need sun. But I figured this is all workable. It’s all changeable. And so I decided that at the tender age of “closer to 80” that I can make some major changes. If you followed any of my attempts at this from last year with videos and other things I did start on it and got going but I never did finish the major projects that I was working on.

    This year feels different. I’ve changed a lot of my eating habits. I’ve also gotten myself back onto a full complement of the supplements that I have taken over the years. [More on that in a later post.] And I am doing daily affirmations.

    I’ve also gotten back to doing yoga for at least 20 minutes every day and I bought a yoga trapeze so that I can hang upside down and safely stretch different body parts [including my back] – because there are many handles on the trapeze.

    Caveat here. I would never recommend the yoga trapeze unless you already know how to protect your body while doing yoga, while stretching, and moving in general. You can get hurt doing yoga if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you like the idea of the trapeze, I’d suggest that you take some yoga classes first so that you know how to position your body in different stretches and movements so that you don’t get hurt.

     And no I haven’t yet perfected the pose that one sees in the ad.

    I’ll be writing more about the different things the X, Y and Z over time but this is why I have not been posting much this year.

    I’ve been busy working on me. Now it’s time to share some of that with you.

  • New Sneakers and Dandelion Wine

    new sneakers

    My new sneakers finally arrived in the mail. They took too long to get here by my count but I had been unable to buy them locally because I prefer to wear a small men’s size as it fits my foot infinitely better than any women’s cut, and I can never find them in a store.

    Anyway I AM able to buy them online and I tend to wait for sales – so I ordered a pair and excitedly awaited their arrival. 

    I have learned that I have an Asics foot for running shoes. I tried another brand and they were fine for about three or four weeks and then started to not feel comfortable.This doesn’t surprise me because many ski shops take one look and tell me I have a Lange foot for ski boats [as does my son.] So my feet are brand-cast……

    Part of my excitement is that new sneakers remind me of the feelings I used to have when I was a kid and I got new sneakers. I think I usually got Keds or Converse and the feeling when putting on the new sneakers was one of exhilaration. I remember feeling like as soon as they were on and laced. I could run with the wind, I could bike all over the place, I was superwoman.

    At some point in my later teen years I read Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and it has stuck with me forever because that man so described how a kid feels when they get their new sneakers.

    But it isn’t just kids I have that same superhero feeling today.

    And as an adult I started making dandelion wine! It’s yummy!!

    Here’s to new sneakers and all those wonderful feelings!!

    And here’s to dandelion wine – the drink and the book

    dandelion

    Thoughts? Comments?

  • Life Lessons From My Dog

    Puppy Energy

    What I learn every day from Tova is to treat each experience as an exciting new adventure – even if it’s something you do every day or several times a day.

    When it’s time to go “play tennis,” her favorite activity, she just gets so excited. As you can see in the video she does circles up the ramp and as you can hear in the video she barks and I cannot get her to not bark when she goes to play tennis.

    Each time we get ready to go out, she is just so excited to put on her harness and go up the ramp to then walk to the field and chase a tennis ball.

    I’m sure you can understand why we don’t do this early in the morning [I like my neighbors.]

    Also – why she stopped at the top and turned around and looked at me was because I was walking much more slowly than usual as I had the camera on her…

    You and I might find the repetition boring but she see each repeat as something to get excited about.

    And there’s a lesson in this….

    everyday events ARE exciting if we treat them as exciting

  • 30 Days Of Video

    film reels

    Today is the 30th day of June and I promised myself that I would create a video a day through June. So today I did my 30th video and here are some things I learned….

    I learned that I can work through heat waves. [Which is good because it seems they’re never ending this summer.]

    I learned that I can have myself be a talking head by using ScreenFlow.

    I learned a lot more about ScreenFlow so that I am now comfortable using it Learning more about it. Because once I have learned more about this version, I will treat myself to the newest update which is not free. That assumes by the time I learn the ins and outs of ScreenFlow I will have made all that extra money. It’s not that expensive – but I have other things I need to buy first

    I learned a lot more about Keynote, which is the basis for many of my videos.

    I learned to work through procrastination. Mixed with the heat waves this was not a good combination and I found myself finishing up my habit building tasks at 11 o’clock at night sometimes but I did them and that is what counts.

    Comments? Thoughts? Thank you!!

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