Health

I was jogging around my neighborhood recently and I found myself engulfed in this amazing fragrance. "What’s that smell?" I wondered. Perfume? Detergent soap? No, no, it was blossoms, flowers in bloom. In the next moment I realized I was witnessing a natural, yearly occurrence. It’s spring!

It felt like a celebration, at least one for my nose. Then I started seeing the trees all around me, marveling at the new sprouts and greenery. I see it in my own backyard, the apricot tree full of beautiful white flowers, sending me hopeful signs I will be eating fantastic fruit in a few months.

It’s spring and from the ground up we are all thinking about spring cleaning. Some of us are actually doing it while the rest of us are procrastinating. All that decision-making of what to throw away presents the primary impediment. Besides, throwing out what we have already purchased invalidates the money we spent as well as the intent—could we have been wrong?

Maybe you don’t realize it, but all of your stuff is piling up altering your perception: the various knickknacks, the hundreds of similar photographs, the piles of magazines and mail and the layers of dust. Your space becomes uninviting (embarrassed to let people drop in), which contributes to the loneliness. "Why don’t I have more friends?" Maybe you don’t really see the person who lives with you and loves you and he or she doesn’t see you anymore because the view is obscured. Here are some reasons why de-cluttering will immediately invigorate your life and renew your relationships.

Some days it seems like bad news just keeps coming. Unemployment is up. The stock market is down. Gas prices are up, down, and up again. You may not be able to control these things, but you can control your reactions to them—and you can do it without spending a dime. Try these quick, easy and free stress busters.

Humor and Laughter
If it’s true that high stress can lead to physical calamities, then perhaps it’s also true that humor and laughter can heal. In his book Love, Medicine and Miracles, Dr. Bernie Siegel wrote that humor not only may have the potential to relieve pain directly, but that it also diverts your attention and helps you relax.

It’s a new year and a fresh beginning. The resolutions are as grand as our imagination: lose an exorbitant amount of weight, exercise daily like professional athletes, climb the highest rung on the ladder at work, do volunteer work and community service, get more involved in our children’s schools, recreate the greatest love story ever told and act more considerately toward the in-laws. Yeah right! There is a huge interim from January to January. At the first sign of stress, we relapse into our old habits. But why can’t we implement beyond the first couple of weeks at best? Is it because at the root of our resolution lies the need to impress others?

The holidays are filled with festivities and beautiful rituals, yet they bring along the dread of dietary demons, the meals, the parties and office snacks, which sabotage the weight we have worked so hard to lose or maintain during the year. These days, everyone wants a fast metabolism and flatter abs. However, what really weighs us down in life is the resentment we carry.

This is not metaphorical. Resentment actually causes us to put on the pounds. Cortisol, a stress hormone, increases with negative emotions and deposits fat around the abdominal region.

There are periods of time in all our lives when we feel despondent, lethargic, depressed and hopeless. These feeling states can last from a few minutes to many years. The length of time feeling down depends on what loss, trauma or hurt you maybe suffering from. Examples of personal traumas are: One of your parents may have died when you were a child. Your marriage may be suffering from an extramarital affair. You may have been a victim of a violent crime or you may be recovering from substance abuse.

Is it really possible to eat out healthfully? When you’re on the road or just working crazy hours and don’t have the time to cook at home, you may actually dread going out to eat. Eating out means having to contend with unruly portion sizes, not knowing the caloric content and ingredients in the food or having to order a dry salad and a grilled breast of chicken to stay on track. Boring!

Take heart. No matter where you are, you should be able to find ethnic restaurants that offer great, healthy choices. Here are some of my favorites.