Choosing Health, Wealth and Happiness
I read a lot of non-fiction books and blogs related to medicine, to health, to disease and mostly to nutrition. This helps me to learn about this important topic and to stay on top of my health. The more I read and learn, the more convinced I am that all chronic disease including auto-immune disease are directly linked to diet and lifestyle. I am not saying that diet alone is responsible for causing disease but it is a driver and one that is easily modified to better mange health.
In my hometown there is a medical practice next door to a dialysis center next door to a wound clinic. It is like one stop shopping for people who suffer from diabetes. In the early stages of this chronic disease, people take medicine and check their blood sugar. As it progresses, it gets much more complicated and can result in wounds that won’t heal, amputation of body parts, loss of sight. It increases the risk for stroke, heart disease, kidney disease and nerve damage. People with advanced diabetes get a lot of expensive treatments that address their symptoms but none that address a cure.
Writing annual goals is a great way to ensure you are living life according to your own terms. Living life in a way that is meaningful to you. Living a life that keeps you on your own personal path. Sharing my goals with you keeps me accountable and on my path of health, wealth and happiness. I also secretly hope to inspire you to strategize your own life by figuring out what is really important to you, how you want to live and developing a path to get there.
As always, I categorize my goals into 3 sections titled health, wealth and happiness. Here are my 2020 goals. You can read about what is most important to me on my Start Here Page.
I work as an Occupational Therapist and have been in the field for 20 years. I have worked in a hospital, in an outpatient clinic and in several nursing homes. I have met a ton of interesting people who have faced some difficult health challenges. When I was a kid, Mother Fran thought I should be a nurse. I always laughed at the notion and reminded her that I fainted at the sight of a lot of blood. Maybe I should have listened to her! When I look at job opportunities, the positions that are of interest to me often require an RN degree. I have no desire to go back to school but if I did, nursing school would be on interest. Like Occupational Therapists, they work in a wide variety of settings and with many different populations of people.
It is that time of year again when we decide we need to eat better, exercise more, sleep longer, spend more time with loved ones; to be healthier, be a better person, and be happier.
On January 1st, many of us made one or more resolutions to improve our health, wealth and happiness. Now it is the middle of January and I would venture that at least 50% of these have been abandoned, forgotten or put off for another time. I gave up on making New Year’s Resolutions several years ago.
In my last post, I wrote about having company over for the holidays and cooking several dinners for up to 6 people. Whenever I talk about cooking, people naturally want to know what I made, how it turned out and if I winged it or followed a recipe. So this post will answer those nagging questions!
In a recent post titled Don’t Be a Stranger, I wrote about my being a bit more complex than I tend to admit to others or accept for myself. I usually think (and write) about how I like to wing it. This applies to certain areas of my life like cooking. In other areas though I keep a pretty rigid schedule and this keeps me on top of my work life and helps to ensure I remember to have a social life and some fun in my week. Interestingly enough the ability to be flexible helps me with winging it and scheduling it. Not simple at all!
I don’t know how Mother Fran and Papa Jack did it but they managed to raise 9 kids who all love to read. How does that happen? In 2019, I had a goal to read at least 20 books. I am happy to report I easily met this goal. At the beginning of the year, I tracked the days I read for at least 5 minutes but no longer bother to do this. That helped me get in the reading habit and now the habit is firmly established! I thought I would share the books I read and put them into my favorite categories. Yup, you guessed it! Health, wealth and happiness!
The holidays are here and that means many of you have been doing a lot of baking. I have been doing my part to keep up with the bakers by eating a lot of yummy cookies, brownies, fudge and cake. I would guess over the last week, I consumed quite a few extra calories per day and my pants are getting a bit snug. That is ok though because I know what to do. I also know I don’t go down this familiar path for as long or with as much intensity as I used to!
I am not worried about the extra calories or even the tight pants because my honey suggested we complete a Whole30 for the month of January. If you are not familiar with the Whole30 check out this page for more information!I have lost track but think this is our 4th or 5th Whole30 and I still love the experience. Maybe I don’t love giving up my wine but the rest of it is easy!
I like to think I am a simple person, someone who is not complicated. Someone who puts on no pretenses and what you see is what you get. I lived in this fantasy world for most of my life until I went through a particularly challenging time and those rose colored glasses were scratched and then smashed. At least that is the time that I believe I started to wake up to my own complexity.
About 10 years ago, I went through a 1-2 year span where I lost five important people in my life. They ranged in age from 29-62. I felt numb for a long time and then I went through a difficult break up. Until that time, I was always able to put on a happy face. I could pull myself together and present myself as a composed, happy, easy going person. But by the end of that 2 year span, after losing 5 people who were too young to die and having my relationship crumble, I just couldn’t do it anymore.
