FINE DINING ON $5-A-DAY – For Life, Health and Happiness

FINE DINING ON $5-A-DAY  23 Ingredients to eat and repeat, twice daily, for Life, Health and Longevity. Dr Longevity.org: a HEALTHY LIFESTYLE AND LONGEVITY REPORT – 1/14/19 Mother Nature gave us so many wonderful ingredients to enjoy, why limit yourself to just 23? Here’s why: When you eat and repeat this same meal twice a day, it will both simplify your life and save you money, while lifting you to a higher level of health, fitness, and happiness. FINE DINING on $5-A-Day offers a shopping list of 23 ingredients that combine to create a 5-Star dining experience. First, it looks like a meal you might be served at the best restaurants in town. Second, it’s low cost, with off-the-shelf produce and local products that give a boost to the local economy. Third, every bite is delicious. It offers a burst of pleasure that turns your dining experience into pure joy. I’m saying this from personal experience. As a person who has spent a lifetime dining out 80% of the time, I’ve now switched to dining at home, enjoying the same meal twice a day for the last 50-days. Over the years, our kitchen as been the test kitchen for Dr Joel, who has been dining alone, most of the time, because the dishes he prepared were too spartan for me. Finally, after 50 years of experimentation, he has finally come up with a recipe that I love and enjoy every day, twice daily. For me, these 23 ingredients have become the GOLD standard for a good meal. It is the meal that I compare with all other meals, and...

OWN Your POWER: How Happiness and Truth Are Linked

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the Greek philosopher Aristotle believed. He went so far as to call happiness “the whole aim and end of human existence.” But what if you are so unhappy that you don’t have time to focus on being happy? One fix for this problem is called: TRUTH. Truth cuts a path through a forest of distractions. It is the sum total of our words and actions that define us. It’s the bundle of habits that define our character. Truth, when expressed as kindness, compassion and respect for others, never wanders. It guides our actions, like a lighthouse in a darkened sea. Situational rhetoric is different. When your happiness depends on situational rhetoric, it means that your words must match the different types of people you talk to, or groups you join. With situational rhetoric you must learn to talk differently and act differently each time you talk, depending on the person or group you are with. This takes practice. Remembering what you said, when, and to whom, wastes your time and wears down your happiness. Telling the truth takes practice. When it becomes a habit, it will save more than your time, it could save your life. Mark Twain got it right when he said: “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember...

What Is Your Biggest Stress This Holiday Season: Finances, Food, or Relationships?

Approaching the holiday season, try to imagine it as an obstacle course — an annual game of life — that offers both challenges and rewards that can bring you both joy, happiness and gratitude or inner anxiety, stress and depression. Your challenge, if you accept it, is to study your calendar of holiday events ahead of time and then train for them, like training for a marathon. Here are three challenges you may face this holiday season, and here’s how to plan for them. A tight budget. A bounty of holiday foods. Relationship challenges. A tight budget. To avoid the endless shopping that comes at this time of year, think instead of the hand-crafted gifts that you can make, a favorite book or music you can give, or up-cycle an item that you never use that you know they would enjoy. A bounty of holiday foods. Anticipate the events you will attend and the traditional holiday foods that will tempt you to overeat or over indulge, along with the offer of too many sweets or alcohol. Then use this “healthy habits” strategy to help you overcome the food challenge: (1) Don’t drink with the meal. A sip of water or wine to help with swallowing food is fine. Just saying “No” to beverages or soup at the start of a meal can help prevent digestive turbulence after the meal is over. Instead, (2) Eat protein first. Start by turning your plate so that the protein in your meal faces you and is eaten first. Then (3) Go for the most fiber rich foods next along with healthy fats such as butter, avocado, high...

China’s Social Credits Are Disrupting the $834 Billion (U.S.) Dollar Airline Industry

Countdown 11.25.18: Trump will face a new G-20 trade challenge with China this week. In an effort to reshape public behavior, China is rolling out a new top-down “Carrot and Stick” approach to the public education of its 1.4 billion citizens. China’s new “social credit system” – already affecting millions of Chinese – is a way for the government to reward or punish people or organizations based on their “trustworthiness.” According to news reports: “If you’re the kind of person who volunteers or donates blood, you’ll be awarded credit points. If you’re getting speeding tickets, charging “under-the-table” fees, posting “fake news” online, smoking in non-smoking zones, or buying too many video games, you’ll be punished.” Will China’s public education program extend to shape individual energy use, the extraction of natural resources such as coal, and the country’s growing air pollution problem? The Chinese government’s analysis of its citizens also includes how they act on buses, how they drive, and how the customers of local businesses rate them. Alexia Parks 10TRAITS offers 1-Minute conflict resolution tools, research, and trait-based training programs for improved decision-making and organizational success. This blog is Day 39 of a series called Countdown: A 50-Day Personal Leadership...

Countdown: How Are You Feeling Right Now?

Day 41: Here is today’s three-part challenge: (1) Write down a single word that describes how you are FEELING when you are performing at your PEAK, that is, at your personal BEST. Do words like excited, passionate,or  joyful come to mind? Think of a word that describes this feeling best for you and write it down. (2) Think of a second word that describes how you FEEL when you are excited, passionate or joyful, … or whatever word you have chosen and write this second word down. Now add the second word to the end of this sentence: Whenever I feel (FIRST WORD), I also feel (SECOND WORD). For example: “Whenever I feel joyful, I also feel confident!” (3) On a scale of 1-5 STARS with five being the best, rate yourself right now. Then, in one sentence, describe what is happening at this very moment to make you feel this way. If you like, you can write down the date and time of day. What time is it right now? Today’s challenge can be easily shared with family and friends. It can also be turned into a daily habit. The only cost, this #BlackFriday is your time. Alexia Parks is CEO of 10TRAITS.com and serves as Chair of 10TRAITS Institute. 10TRAITS offers 1-Minute conflict resolution tools, research, and trait-based training programs for improved decision-making and organizational success. This blog is Day 41 of a series called Countdown: A 50-Day Personal Leadership Challenge....

Countdown: Finding The Will To Change

Day 43: Finding the will to change takes more than “willpower.”The fight for the top leadership role in Congress between two women politicians: Representative Nancy Pelosi and Representative-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes deeper than media headlines. The media loves a good fight. This fight is different.  This fight between two strong women leaders is about accelerating the SPEED of change, changing the entire culture of Congress, and getting it right, so that our elected leaders can break through the current gridlock in Congress and make government REAL again for people.  To change how government WORKS, we need to change how government LOOKS. Along with the 100 new women leaders entering Congress in 2019 imagine if the Democrats were to chose a new co-leadership team that would reflect both the diversity of America and our shared common values. That co-leadership team?  Pelosi AND Ocasio-Cortez. Co-Leadership of the House of Representatives by two strong women would pair the power and experience of an incumbent with vision and purpose of a high-energy newcomer. For example, Nancy Pelosi’s 31 years in Congress, representing San Francisco, California’s 12th District, might represent “the stable center” where change happens incrementally, over time, through diplomacy and concessions on both sides of the aisle. Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from New York’s 14 Congressional District is an educator and a fighter. Her cause is to make government REAL for people. She wants to remove the mystique of “being an incumbent,” cut through the “red tape of government,” and help people see themselves stepping into leadership roles. It would require setting up a structural framework that recognizes the complexity and volatility of modern...