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I hear it all the time – “Back when I was young …” or “Back in the days things were so much better …” or “Kids these days have no respect …”

Hey the past is the past and for myself I am happy to let it go and move on and move up! Because life wasn’t better back when.

My children are far more knowledgeable than I was at their age and I’m sure their children will be far more knowledgeable than they are. Athletes are now twice what their counterparts were 50 years ago. We now live longer because doctors have better educations. Cars are safer. Simply put – overall progress is positive.

But some things remain the same – Domestic violence has been passed down from generation to generation it’s just that now-a-days it’s no longer hidden in the closet. Racial prejudice is still active in older generations because of fictitious fear and limited segregation. In fact it’s more like all the crap we face today has been passed down from generation to generation if we are willing to truly remember the past.

So why do we hold on to the past – because we selectively remember what we want to remember and most importantly because we think our lives are of less value today.

WELL I DISAGREE!!!!

The past wasn’t better but it was real and your life is of value at any age. I any case it’s time for those of us in our second fifty to stand up and be counted – POSITIVELY. Forget the past and start making hay while the sun is still shining.

So what do I suggest we do? We quit isolating ourselves. Get out and get moving – don’t let the NEWS (Home Spun Terrorism) – stop you from living. Invite the grandkids over more often and teach them how to respect all human beings through our actions – NOT OUR WORDS. Get involved in ways that we can make others smile. Get a hostess job at McDonalds and share a smile with everyone that walks in the door. Volunteer wherever you can and as often as you can. AND keep this close to your heart – “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings” or until YOU give up!!

You have so much left to give and so much left to live for if you want too!! So get out there and give away kindness – you have it in you. If we really want to look back at our past – we need to see it for what it was – LESS THAN TODAY – so stop wasting your valuable moments and LIVE!!!

Life wasn’t better back then – it’s better today in every way. So step up – forget about the past and live in the NOW, be willing to change and humbling yourself enough grow!! 

And if you still think things were better in the past – check out this video J

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes    www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQmz6Rbpnu0

If there is one thing I have found to be a consistent in life it is when things appear to be at their very worst, this is the time when things are about to change for the good.

And this is the time when you either prove to yourself that you have the courage to hang in there and endure the pain or this is the time when you turn and run and begin a life of excuses.

The saying “Good things come to those who wait,” provides us with the simple answer that patience is the key to success and it is, but it’s not the only key. You must keep learning, growing and moving forward – “One step at a time” and never give up on your faith.

In any case here is a very nice poem that sums it up – It’s all within your reach – if you want it!

Don’t You Quit

When things go wrong as they sometimes will
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill.
When funds are low and the debts are high.
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh.
When care is pressing you down a bit.
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns.
As every one of us sometimes learns.
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.

Don’t give up though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt.
And you never can tell how close you are.
It may be near when it seems so far:
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Anonymous

Wikipedia describes faith as:

Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, concept or thing. Since faith implies a trusting reliance upon future events or outcomes, it is often taken by its detractors as inevitably synonymous with a belief “not resting on logical proof or material evidence.” Faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true, belief in and assent to the truth of what is declared by another, based on his or her supposed authority and truthfulness. Informal usage can be quite broad, and the word is often used as a mere substitute for trust or belief.

So if we look at all of this logically and faith is a mere substitute for trust or belief in the word or words of another human being, I think we all can agree – Muslin, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, etc. etc. that this spirit, force of nature, God, has not to anyone’s knowledge or acknowledgement set foot on this earth, therefore who amongst us can factually say which prophets statement is more correct and who’s statement is based upon the ultimate authority and truth? NO ONE! So why the separation and adamant views that one belief is right and therefore the other belief must be wrong? Could it all boil down to protection of identity and the need to have this perceived importance and value?  

Well I think it’s normal as we all want to belong so yes, I too made my choice and I selected my identity which has become my faith. I believe in a higher power – that I do in fact choose to call God, but I struggle with all this seperation and religious identity and this conflict that happens when someone feels one religion is more correct or better than another. I mean, they were all created by men and based upon that man’s interpretation of his spiritual connection, his perceived higher power and ultimately his faith.

In any case for me I wonder if I were God and all mankind were my children, could it be possible that I would choose one child over another based upon their preference in the color of their shirt!

When my children were 4 and 5 years old I bought a book by Melody Beattie called “Codependent No More.” I had no idea why I bought it nor did I have any idea what I was getting myself into, BUT I’ve always trusted my higher power to guide me as to what books I should read and amazingly, I’ve never been let down.

The interesting thing was that when I first read this book I thought OMG she’s written this book about my wife. However once the information had time to percolate the lights finally came on and I realized that it was me that the book was written about.

You know it’s funny how self honesty has its way of wiggling if we are willing to work at change and humble ourselves. In any case big changes have happened in my life over the past 6 years and to be 100% honest I’m really looking forward to the next 6 years and the 6 years after that and the next 6 years and … you see in my past honesty and humility weren’t who I was they were something I felt I had the right to adjust when adversity arose but now that the door has been opened I personally can see how positively honesty impacts my life and how it allows me to love myself and in return give away what I have. So how do I handle adversity – with honesty and that’s all I can do.

Here’s a little story that adds a nice flavor to accepting adversity!

Potatoes, Eggs and Coffee

Once upon a time, a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn’t know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved, another one soon followed.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot, and ground coffee beans in the third pot. He then let them sit and boil, without saying a word to his daughter.

The daughter moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing. After twenty minutes, he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup.

Turning to her, he asked, “Daughter, what do you see?”

“Potatoes, eggs, and coffee,” she hastily replied.

“Look closer,” he said, “and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft.

He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg.

Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.

“Father, what does this mean?” she asked.

He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs, and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity, the boiling water. However, each one reacted differently.

The potato went in strong, hard and unrelenting, but in boiling water it became soft and weak. The egg was fragile with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard.

However, the ground coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new.

“Which are you?” he asked his daughter. “When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg, or a coffee bean?”

In life, things happen around us and things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.

Author Unknown

There is an old saying – all things in life worth having are difficult to attain.

Yes it would be nice to win the lottery and statistics show that 33% of older people hope to win a lottery to ensure their financial security for the remainder of their lives, but even at 60 or 70 years of age the world hasn’t stopped spinning and everything – every opportunity is still at the tips of our fingers, so don’t hand your life over just yet and put it in the hands of luck – if you ain’t dead you still have a chance.

Of course it will be more difficult to fire up the engines in you’re in your seventies or even eighties, but the only thing that ever stops us from being what we want to be are the limits we place upon our self or those limits that we allow others to impose upon us.

The story below highlights how it’s the struggles in life that make us strong and how when others impose their will upon us we need to have the voice to stand up and speak out for what is right!

The Butterfly

A man found a cocoon for a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared stuck.

The man decided to help the butterfly and with a pair of scissors he cut open the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man watched the butterfly expecting it to take on its correct proportions. But nothing changed.

The butterfly stayed the same. It was never able to fly. In his kindness and haste the man did not realize that the butterfly’s struggle to get through the small opening of the cocoon is nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight.

Author Unknown

Early bird gets the worm – That being said – you also need to hit the hay early as nothing makes it more difficult to concentrate than sleep deprivation. Two more things; don’t sleep more than 8 hours and sleeping in after a late evening won’t make things better in fact that will most likely only leave you feeling lethargic and groggy.

Exercise – If you weren’t aware of the benefits to the brain from exercise – you soon will be. Exercising leads to increased mental capacity because it calms the mind when you’re exercising and it leads to an increase of energy afterwards which leaves you feeling invigorated and with an improved sense of concentration.

Read books that are challenging – If you really want to increase your capacity to think you might want to read books that challenge you to focus. It’s just a matter of time before your mind will accept the challenge and then you’re off to the races with your mind being the primary benefactor.

Reduce watching TV – Why? TV doesn’t use your mental capabilities or allow your mind to refresh itself. TV just drains your brain and to vegetate serves you no benefit. A healthy option is to listen to music or read a book as both stimulate the mind into a creative state which provides the additional benefit of real relaxation.  

Take a little chill time for yourself – Take a moment to shut down from all the chaos and just sit there and reflect upon your day and all the positive that has happened,(if there was any negative you have already given that enough focus already – that I can almost guarantee.) In addition, give yourself a few minutes to meditate as this will also slow down the monkey mind and recharge your mental batteries so you can remain calm during the next chaotic moment which is always lurking in wait just around the corner.

Yesterday Canada won the Gold medal in hockey and when you looked at the American players it showed just how far we may have gone off base as a society. Their heads were all hanging down, no smiles, they appeared to be failures – FAILURES – how bad can it be to be the second best hockey team in the world?

They aren’t failures they are all winners – every last person who does the best he or she can do at whatever they are doing is a winner.

So, why are the results of our athlete’s actions, judged upon the accomplishments of others? And why if they don’t win are they deemed a disappointment and labelled as “first place, second place … LOSERS!”  

Because a great deal of our society has lost touch with the true meaning of sport – fitness, compassion, understanding and appreciation of the accomplishments of others – because we have become enamoured with our own opinions and feel it’s our God given right to judge the performance of others – because when we judge others we don’t need to look at ourselves, our own life and our personal affairs – because we don’t need to be accountable for our opinions because everyone is entitled to their opinion!!!

In any case “I am Canadian” and yes I was happy to see Sid the kid take that pass from Iggy and slip it past the best player in the tournament (Ryan Miller of the US), but had we lost my enjoyment of the game was not based upon the outcome – it was based upon just how amazing each and every one of these athletes truly are and how exciting the game was.

I any case I have learned that win or lose the sun will come up tomorrow but when I state my opinion it’s my way of justifying my lack of action or to create a distraction so I might hide from the negative reflections in my mirror.

Many cultures have used various herbs to increase memory, and IQ throughout time. However not until recently has the west begun to catch on.

Today more and more reputable scientific organizations and Universities have done studies pertaining to herbs and their healing capabilities. Below I have listed a few herbs to help get your brain firing on all cylinders:

Ginkgo Biloba – Ginkgo has been noted for improving memory and increasing blood flow to the brain. In addition Ginkgo has an antioxidant effect that helps to protect brain cells from damage caused by free radicals. Free radical damage has been linked to diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Gotu Kola – Gota Kola has been shown to improve mental clarity, increase memory and increase IQ. In addition it is also known to calm ones mood and reduce anxiety.

Passion Flower – Passion Flower has been used for reducing anxiety, combating insomnia as well as additional nervous disorders and ADHD.

Siberian Ginseng – Ginseng helps support memory functions and concentration in the brain. It is also an “adaptogen”, which is known to keep the balanced under stressful conditions, thereby minimizing the effects of stress on the body.

Today I went to have what I thought would be a Stress Test. When I got there they said I needed to have a bunch of other tests first. After they checked me out they said I was fine – but because my father has had heart disease they would like me to come back at the end of March for the stress test.

This place was amazing. C-era Medical Clinic was founded in November 1999 by Dr. Alykhan Nanji. The clinic was developed using concepts from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Faculty of Management at the University of Calgary – along with a philosophy of global best practices, preventive health care and excellent patient care.

In any case the really great thing is that I found their Website. http://www.c-era.com Check it out – great info to keep your heart ticking. Here is an example of just one of many articles.

The Benefits of Regular Exercise

Exercise helps you feel better, live longer and (surprise) it can even be fun! Here are just a few ways that exercise can improve your life.

Exercise improves your mood.

Exercise stimulates brain chemicals which leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out. You’ll also look good and feel better when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem.

Exercise combats chronic diseases.

Regular exercise can help you prevent and manage high blood pressure, improve your cholesterol and might even prevent Type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain types of cancer.

Exercise helps you manage your weight.

This one’s a no-brainer. When you exercise, you burn calories. The more calories you burn — the easier it is to keep your weight under control.

Exercise makes your heart happy.

Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues. In fact, regular exercise helps your entire cardiovascular system — the circulation of blood through your heart and blood vessels — work more efficiently.

Exercise promotes better sleep.

A good night’s sleep can improve your concentration, productivity and mood. Regular exercise can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep.

Exercise can rev up your sex life.

Regular exercise can leave you feeling energized and looking better, which can have a stimulating effect on your sex life. Plus, men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than men who don’t exercise!

Exercise is fun!

Exercise doesn’t have to be drudgery – think of it as play time! Take a ballroom dancing class. Explore a local walking or hiking trail. Push the kids on the swings. Find activities you enjoy and can do with people you love!

According to the U.S. Surgeon General, the three most important personal habits that influence health are smoking, alcohol consumption and diet. For the two out of three adults who do not drink excessively or smoke, the single biggest influence on their long-term health outcome is diet. The Surgeon General’s 1988 Report on Nutrition and Health establishes the fact that two-thirds of all deaths — including coronary heart disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, diabetes and some types of cancer — are related to what we eat.

And when it comes to diet, the most important changes we can make are to decrease fat and sodium, and increase consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. With that in mind …

A study from Tufts University in Boston ranks the antioxidant value of commonly eaten fruits and vegetables using an analysis called ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity). This is a test tube analysis that measures the total antioxidant power of foods and other chemical substances.

Antioxidants are special compounds that protect against oxidation, or cellular damage caused by free radicals, and they have been shown to be effective in helping to prevent retinal diseases such as macular degeneration. Familiar antioxidants include vitamin E, vitamin C and beta carotene. It may be important to remember that, while antioxidant vitamin supplements are popular, it appears the combination of the nutrients in the foods have the greatest effect.

The daily serving of fruits and vegetables is a minimum of 5 servings a day – that’s 5 cups if you chop them up. How are you doing???