Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

My brother, Marc-Emile, sparkled brilliantly. At sixteen years old, he could expound on physics or Plato, calculus, or car mechanics, Stravinsky or Steppenwolf. At seventeen, he began reading the  Great Books  series, starting with Homer and Aeschylus and moving forward through the Greeks. I don’t know how many of those  Great Books  he read. He didn’t have that long. My brother had everything going for him. He was kind, ethical, and handsome. He graduated high school a year early, at the top of his class, with virtually perfect SATs. He started at MIT as a physics major. He ended at MIT too, one year later. At the age of nineteen, he flung himself to his death from the tallest campus building. Then there was me, Marc’s little sister. Everyone knew me too, but not because I was brilliant. I was exceptional in a less appealing way, having been severely burned in a fire when I was four years old. I barely survived this injury, which left me with no lower lip, no chin, no neck and my u...

“Nothing in the world can bother you as much as your own mind, I tell you. In fact, others seem to be bothering you, but it is not others, it is your own mind.” ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Do you ever feel confused about what to do and unsure about how to find clarity? Maybe an unforeseen event, like a layoff or breakup, knocked you into a mental spin. Or perhaps you’re muddling along, with no clue where you’re going. Confusion can leave you helpless, indecisive, and afraid. And not knowing what to do only adds to your mental chaos. I’ve been there, lost, irresolute, and undecided in life. But, amid my mid-life confusion, life-changing trauma blasted all that mental mess aside and made way for a greater worry—leukemia. Yet, surprisingly, cancer guided me toward mental clarity and calm. But don’t despair. You don’t need a tragedy to create inner lucidity. Because here’s the three-step method that I discovered to transform confusion into mental clarity. Slow Down for Mental Clarity Y...

“You must first teach a child he is loved. Only then is he ready to learn everything else.” ~Amanda Morgan If I had a nickel for every parent who asked me, “So, if we do (…insert a strategy they have been given…), can we know for sure that he won’t have to deal with (…insert list of problems here …) when he grows up?” Sadly, there are no nickels for hearing the question, nor guarantees to offer anxious parent. In fact, parental anxiety exists largely because life has no guarantees. Nevertheless, the question in itself is worth considering. So let’s look at it. Essentially, every parent wants to know “What should we be doing to guarantee that our child is a ‘successful’ adult who won’t have to experience avoidable pain and suffering?” Let that sink in. Of course, we want to have this reassurance. Of course, we want our children to never have to experience the pain and suffering that we know are possible in life. And, of course, we want to do what we can, proactively, to help th...