Health:
  1.    Drink plenty of water.
  2.    Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
  3.    Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
  4.    Live with the 3 E’s — Energy,  Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
  5.    Make time to practice prayer and meditation or yoga.
  6.    Play more games.
  7.    Read more books than you did in 2008.
  8.    Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
  9.    Sleep for 7 hours.
  10.  Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day. And while you walk, smile.

Personality:
  11.  Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what
  their journey is all about.
  12.  Don’t have negative thoughts or things you cannot control.
  Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
  13.  Don’t over do. Keep your limits.
  14.  Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
  15.  Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip.
  16.  Dream more while you are awake.
  17.  Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
  18.  Forget issues of the past. Don’t remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
  19.  Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don’t hate others.
  20.  Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
  21.  No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
  22.  Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
  23.  Smile and laugh more.
  24.  You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

Society:
  25.  Call your family often.
  26.  Each day give something good to others.
  27.  Forgive everyone for everything.
  28.  Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
  29.  Try to make at least three people smile each day.
  30.  What other people think of you is none of your business.
  31.  Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your family and friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:
  32.  Do the right thing!
  33.  Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.
  34.  GOD heals everything.
  35.  However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
  36.  No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
  37.  The best is yet to come.
  38.  When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it.
  39.  Your Inner most is always happy. So, be happy.

The chain’s junior bacon cheeseburger is ranked as ‘the most unhealthful’ value item available among the offerings of national fast-food chains, according to the Cancer Project.

By Jerry Hirsch (LA Times)

Recessionary eating isn’t always healthful eating, especially when it comes to the $1 value menus pushed by fast-food chains to keep sales growing through the economic slump, according to one health watchdog.

Jack in the Box’s Junior Bacon Cheeseburger was ranked “the most unhealthful” value item available among the offerings of national fast-food chains, according to an analysis by dietitians with the nonprofit Cancer Project in Washington that is scheduled to be released today.

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This is by far my favorite salad…for now. Keeping in my mind I’m trying my best to favor the healthy (salad) option. The attraction: fresh ingredients and tasty flatbread (I know, not healthy), and it’s certainly enough salad to satisfy a meal.

If you haven’t tried it, go get one like asap. Tomorrow. Like foreal.

A study of the relationships of nearly 5,000 people tracked for decades in the Framingham Heart Study shows that good cheer spreads through social networks of nearby family, friends and neighbors.

By Karen Kaplan (LA Times)

They say misery loves company, but the same may be even more true of happiness. 

In a study published online today by the British Medical Journal, scientists from Harvard University and UC San Diego showed that happiness spreads readily through social networks of family members, friends and neighbors. 

Knowing someone who is happy makes you 15.3% more likely to be happy yourself, the study found. A happy friend of a friend increases your odds of happiness by 9.8%, and even your neighbor’s sister’s friend can give you a 5.6% boost. 

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Just in time for the holidays, some medical advice most people will like: Take a nap. Interrupting sleep seriously disrupts memory-making, compelling new research suggests. But on the flip side, taking a nap may boost a sophisticated kind of memory that helps us see the big picture and get creative.

“Not only do we need to remember to sleep, but most certainly we sleep to remember,” is how Dr. William Fishbein, a cognitive neuroscientist at the City University of New York, put it at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience last week.

Good sleep is a casualty of our 24/7 world. Surveys suggest few adults attain the recommended seven to eight hours a night.

Way too little clearly is dangerous: Sleep deprivation causes not just car crashes but all sorts of other accidents. Over time, a chronic lack of sleep can erode the body in ways that leave us more vulnerable to heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses.

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by Jullien Gordon

It’s simple. Change your mindset from working FOR your company to working WITH your company. Employment is a partnership, not an obligation, no matter how bad the economy is.

The first thing any non-stock holding employee has to accept is that no matter where you work and how much you make, you’re being undervalued…at least financially. No company in the world (except ones that get 700 billion dollar tax payer bail outs from the government) can pay you more than the value you are creating for them. Even if you were earning $250,000 a year, you have to be making at least twice that for the company in revenue for it to stay in business.

Most people say that they “work for” a company. Though the difference between working FOR a company and working WITH a company is verbally minute, the mindset shift is huge. Check out the mental differences between someone who works WITH versus someone who works FOR and see where you are on the spectrum. People who work FOR companies in times like these are vulnerable whereas people who work WITH them have a stronger position.

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pictured above: Kudakwashe Chiveura digs for crickets to eat in Mutoko, about 80 miles northeast of Harare. Grazing land has been destroyed by poachers setting fires to scare rabbits, rodents and other small animals into traps and nets

pictured above: Children wait by the roadside with wild fruit for sale in Murewa. Zimbabwe’s inflation, the highest in the world, pegged at over 230 million percent, has spiraled out of control at a time when health and education services have collapsed.

Crop failure and economic collapse have left the nation without food. Millions survive on nothing but wild fruit. ‘Children are dying out in the bush,’ one foreign doctor says.

By Robyn Dixon  (LA Times)

Reporting from Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe — The child’s name is Godknows, and his mother smiles softly when she explains the choice: Only God knows whether he will live or die.

“I’m leaving everything in God’s hands because the child is always ill,” she whispers.

Godknows is 2 but looks like a frail 6-month-old, wrists and ankles like twigs, dark hollows under his solemn eyes, sores on his face. He flops in his mother’s arms like an exhausted old man, a victim of Zimbabwe’s silent hunger crisis.

The twin miseries of crop failure and economic collapse have left Zimbabwe’s villages without food. Millions survive on nothing but wild fruit, and many have died.

There are no official statistics. But ask people here in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South province whether they know anyone who died of hunger recently, and the answer is nearly always yes. Sometimes it’s four or six people in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes they just say “plenty.”

“Children are dying out in the bush,” one foreign doctor says, on condition of anonymity. “We are all guarded. We have to keep quiet or else we’ll be kicked out” by the government.

The crisis has been exacerbated by President Robert Mugabe’s decision in June to suspend humanitarian aid during the run-up to his one-man presidential runoff. The long-ruling Mugabe, stunned when he won fewer votes than opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round in March, accused aid agencies of supporting the opposition and didn’t lift the ban until August. Critics say the regime, which has a history of denying food to opposition areas, was using hunger as a political tool to force people to vote for Mugabe.

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pictured above (nphocus photography): Eze Burts, volunteer Youth Basketball Instructor, leads program participants through pushups during routine health exercises for the CLIMB Youth Basketball Camp

Only about a third are in the ‘healthy zone.’ L.A. Unified’s scores also edged up but are below the state average.

By Corina Knoll (LA Times)

When it comes to their physical fitness, students are taking baby steps toward better health, according to results from the 2008 California Physical Fitness Test released Tuesday.

The annual public school test measures six areas, including cardiovascular endurance, body fat percentage and strength and flexibility. Every spring, students in grades five, seven and nine run a mile, among other activities. They are scored on whether their performance falls in the “healthy fitness zone,” a term used to reflect a reasonable level of fitness. 

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About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion, according to a report by UC Berkeley researchers.

By Margot Roosevelt  (LA Times)

Eroding beaches, disappearing snowpacks, subdivisions decimated by wildfires — climate change in California could be expensive.

For the first time, the costs of global warming’s projected effects in the nation’s largest state have been quantified: About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and wildfires, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion, according to a new report, “California Climate Risk and Response,” written by UC Berkeley researchers Fredrich Kahrl and David Roland-Holst.

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When you think of losing weight and getting healthy, you think about lacing up your running shoes and heading to the gym. But the next time you think about getting healthy, try a new vision that includes whispering sounds of the rainforest, rejuvenating smells of eucalyptus, the relieving heat of water soaking through your skin and the relaxing pressure of experienced hands releasing knots under your neck and back. In other words, treat yourself to a session at the spa.

The No. 1 contributor to many degenerative diseases is stress, and taking a regular session at the spa, once a week or even once or twice a month, can help you de-stress and improve your health. Chronic stress can lead to ulcers, chest pain, weight loss, weight gain, loss of appetite, digestive problems, canker sores, cold sores, acne, rashes, eczema, high blood pressure, miscarriage, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, heartburn, headaches, back aches, stiff muscles, constipation and diarrhea. 

Source: Urban Influence Magazine | Continue Reading »