Everybody Should...

...at some time or another in their life:

~Love something unconditionally.

~Get really pissed at their parents for the myriad of mistakes they have made along the way...and then forgive them.

~Live outside of their home state for at least one year.

~Commit to a belief that is greater than yourself.

~Make one truly un-selfish decision. A big one.

~Admit to their mistakes, no matter how small or large. One of the most attractive qualities in a person is when they can admit fault. One of the worst is self righteous indignation.

~Leave their home country at least once. It is very important to see how others live.

~Exercise compassion, humility and non-judgment. The rest is easy from there.

~Treat life like it is the balance of the 5 star points of life that it is. Manage your sleep, diet, stress, exercise and hormones. If you do you will live a long life of good quality, hopefully.

~Don't live for anyone else. Find peace with your path in life and don't seek approval or acceptance from others to define your success. This life is yours and you only get 1.

~Create an inviting and comfortable living space you can retreat from the stress of the world to.

~Don't bite off more than you can chew. Don't over-fill your plate. In other words, don't commit to more than you can do and still be a person you are proud of.

~Pick a few quality relationships to invest in over an abundance of quantity.

~Set goals and work toward them. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish if you focus your mind on it.

~Never stop learning. Knowledge is the source of power.

~Go through something really awful...and come out a better person for it on the other side.

~Recognize that the road to true and lasting change is fraught with many twists and turns and attempts to de-rail you. This is just the process of life and if you keep getting back on that road to change you can accomplish amazing things.

If you have been blessed enough to go through any of these experiences and come through to the other side it only gets better from here!

Thanks for joining,
Leah

What I Wanna Be When I Grow Up

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a buyer. Shopping on other peoples dime sounded like the best thing in the world. Then in high school I decided I wanted to be a bartender. When I found out I had to be 21 to tend bar I concluded the next best thing to do was go to college. My first major was Hospitality Management. I wanted to go to Johnson & Whales University in South Carolina so bad. Settling practically on a local community college 30 minutes from home, I quickly changed my major to Business, still desiring a hotel management gig but going for a much "broader" degree. I took my first Economics class that was so far over my head, I quickly changed my major to Journalism. By now I wanted to write for Travel & Leisure magazine and travel around the world and review my experiences (don't we all?). Then I had a suckie Journalism professor at the junior college in Northern California I attended for a year. About that time I had to declare a major for my Bachelor's Degree entrance to the university. I went through the California State University catalog and made a list of all the majors that 1) did not require math 2) did not require science and 3) were employable without a graduate degree. It was between Journalism (already tried that), Recreation Management (by now I was over the whole work-as-a-hotel-manager thing), and Interior Design. Being a creative and artistic person by nature I naturally selected Interior Design for my BA, assuming it was something I could do. I did quite well in the program but after graduation only gave the career a short and misguided attempt. I worked in that field for a few years and quickly burnt out on the furniture salesperson/interior designer gig I had at a prestigious and popular national brand furniture showroom. Then I took a job with a prestige cosmetic line at Bloomingdale's in Southern California.

Through the 9 years I have been in the cosmetic industry (never wanting a career in the field but not able to turn down the promotions that kept coming my way), I have searched behind every mountain and under every rock to find the perfect career. I looked into Paralegal school, thought about getting a MA in each English, Art History and Religious Studies at one time or another, thought about makeup artistry as a true profession (theatrical, movies, etc.), looked into esthetician school or revitalizing my long dead interior design career and my God I can't really remember what else there was! So the time has come to make a change and I am going back to lucky #3? Well, kinda. Journalism was most likely the closest I came to recognizing my true profession, my calling, the coalescence of talent, interest and ability that resides in each person. So 15 years after my high-school graduating class of '94 was unleashed on the working faction, and I am watching this blog and Spanish class expand my tiny little horizons and the wheels in my head are starting to turn, wondering how to make something happen.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

A Great Doctor Is An Amazing Thing To Have

I am very fortunate to live in one of a limited number of cities that boast a Mayo Clinic. I saw an associate of my regular doctor today and she was amazing. Diagnosed the pain in my back with some complex name that I did not write down and can't remember, referred me to a physical therapist that has had much success in treating my condition, assessed that the anxiety was a result of the increased pain not only from the condition in my lower back but from the flare-up of Fibromyalgia pain caused by the lack of yoga, one of my more effective ways of managing the Fibromyalgia in the first place. She recommended I reduce the number of supplements I am taking, see my psychiatrist to increase Lexapro for the anxiety (short term), told me to stay on Tramadol and increased my dosage (bleh), added Flexeral, a muscle relaxer, and re-filled my Xanax prescription. She went extensively over yoga poses and how to adapt them from active poses to passive poses. I can bend forward, it is just twisting the low back that is giving me so much pain and in turn I am avoiding stretching all together. What an amazing doctor that took into consideration the total body/life experience as a way to manage illness!

This is what I have been looking for the entire time I have been sick! In the past I have been treated like a crazy person, a drug addict, a mental freak, depressed and sorrowful by choice. I have been dismissed and not taken seriously. I have been told that I needed to figure out how to get myself better and been accused of seeing too many doctors instead of just staying with one (the one that was doing jack-shit to improve my health?). I have gone to so many appointments with so much hope and optimism because I truly needed help, only to leave in tears and desperation, so despondent, so broken. The hardest part of this disease is there is no magic pill to make you better. No prescribed protocol for the doctor to set you up with and send you home, reassuring you that it will work, that you will indeed start to improve. Recovering from this illness requires a truly holistic approach, in my opinion, from my experience. Treating the body as a whole, not just parts of the sum.

So I came home and took Xanax and Tramadol and decided I finally needed to exercise so I did the trampoline and devised a stretching program that increases flexibility and avoids the painful twisting of my lower back. And I feel better. But so dulled out by the drugs. And I really need to go to the grocery store and pay the bills and fill my prescriptions and spend some major time studying so I will plot ahead and hope I can accomplish all my tasks...and get out of pain, too!

Thanks for joining,
Leah

Anxiety, Pain, Bi-Polar & ADHD

I feel amazed today. Amazed at how much we have woken up over-night and are changing the charted course. Re-writing the future. Abandoning the script...and picking up another to put in its place. And realizing how stifling the road we were headed down really is and what it would possibly be like to taste the freedom, the sweet nectar of living with passion, dripping down our tongues. Unleashing all this emotion, stirring up these deep and youthful longings and desires has given me...anxiety.

I am bursting out of my skin. The realization that what is now is just not right is almost more than I can take. I am bouncing off the walls, very ADHD, unable to complete a task because there are so many more important ones to start! I can't seem to focus and the anxiety hurts as it courses through my body and out my finger tips, but it's a good kind of hurt. Maybe a necessary one? It's what has been suppressed for so long. But it feels like manic to me... I found out some very interesting information about myself as a child this last weekend. How disturbed I really was. And that my penchant for self-loathing began long before I ever realized it. I knew I was a bruised and battered soul. But I never realized I was always a bruised and battered soul. A child flinging them-self down a staircase or holding their breath until they pass out is absurdly extreme behavior. But behavior that, none the less, explains a lot about the woman that child has become.

So I have finally put the call in to my doctor. My Tramadol use is really high and not doing much to help the pain. Now the anxiety. This half-golf ball in my lower left back has me really screwed up. And the dancing spasming across the top of my back has returned. I am having a hard time sleeping and feel generally wild and bewildered. This sounds like a bona fide Fibromyalgia flare up...with some manic bi-polar thrown in, and a side of ADHD. It's been a while since this has happened...and now I must slow down and focus and get back on track. I am at a bit of a loss as to what to do next...

Thanks for joining,
Leah

An Extraordinary Life

Can we do it? Can we break away from the chains of convention and make it happen now? Can we take the biggest risk ever and just go? Do we have the guts? Many people do it. Many people take the course of their life and manipulate it into an extraordinary existence, an unusual one. I must ask myself the question, "Is the future we have planned, and are working so hard for, really the one we want?" I don't honestly know that I can answer yes, that I am all that knocked out by it. I feel the damper of domesticated subservience in the true self already blanketing around my psyche. I feel we are twirling around on that hamster wheel and never getting anywhere, believing that one day we will get somewhere, but where that is we don't know. All the while what is plausible, what is possible, what is necessary, is never in reach. I have to ask myself the question, "What if?". What if we laid to rest our current goals, hopes, dreams, aspirations, problems, complications and frustrations. What if we sold our life, defaulted our debt and just picked up and moved to South America, or Mexico, or some unknown destination yet to be determined? What if we uprooted every minute dull drum of our existence and MADE THIS LIFE OUR LIFE? The life we choose and want, the life we laugh frequently and whole-heatedly in. What if we could break free from these chains that have imprisoned us for so long and choose the path less traveled?

We could spend our days knowing each other in a long forgotten way. We would discover the world and in turn discover ourselves. We could find peace in our spirit and the passion in our marriage that is beating dormant deep within both of our souls. We could take a major risk and rewind back to the people we were when we were 22 and first fell in love, but so much wiser now. We could go back to a time before we were so beaten up by the world. We could project and intend for a peaceful life of opportunity. Where the health of the spirit and soul prevail over the fulfillment of the ego and competition. We can insure that this amazing marriage, this amazing love that we have been blessed with, does not slip away into the tangle of civilized propriety. We could renew and revive and rekindle and actually achieve without so much sacrifice. At no point in time before has this been possible. But the glimmer of the edge of it is revealing itself and I think with some intense planning and preparation and a very quick wit it could happen. We could honorably discharge from our life in the USA and allow adventure and opportunity and passion to drive our next step, the next step to the life we choose. The life of purpose and intention not driven by what is expected or habitual.

I propose this: We pack up our life and the 3 of us get in our truck and head south. Free from worldly possessions. Free from sacrificing all the time in our lives to doing things we hate, things that don't make us happy and make us feel and act ways that are foreign to our true nature. Free from struggling and solitude and so many years lost trying to play the game. We will reclaim our lives at 34! Nestled into the cocoon of the unknown...of sleepy towns and small fishing villages. Of 3 week stops to earn a little cash with no set destination in mind. Of lazy days spent together enjoying the marvels of life, the beauty of the world. Of bustling cities and crowded markets and fiestas and siestas. A life that unfolds naturally and organically into a life of excellence and true knowledge of mind, body and soul. We will one day find our paradise. The place we truly feel at home, and we will stop to build an amazing life. A life of simplicity and passion and peace. And we will achieve all the greatness that is meant to be without sacrificing any more time that we have loving and sharing and laughing together.

Thanks for joining,
Leah

Simple Ways To Add Some Green To Your Life

In my quest for healthier living I have come across a multitude of simple ways to reduce toxicity in my life. Here are some of my discoveries:

~Replace the plastic shower curtain liner with a fabric one that you can wash. Benefits: Good for the environment, less waste and less toxic exposure to your home and family.

~Use a refillable stainless steel water bottle http://kleankanteen.com/ instead of using a new plastic one daily. Benefits: Less environmental waste and toxic exposure from plastic to your body, not to mention cheaper and much more convenient.

~Use baking soda http://www.armhammer.com/ to scour tubs, sinks and toilets. Follow with a spray of 3/4 water to 1/4 bleach http://www.clorox.com/ to disinfect and rinse after 30 minutes. I thought this was silly but ran out of Comet and decided to try it. It worked great, and I did not even have to wear rubber gloves! Benefits: Non-toxic to the environment and less (no) chemical inhalation during cleaning.

~Use maple syrup or raw sugar with Stevia http://www.stevia.com/ to sweeten food & drink, not artificial sweeteners. I recommend using a small amount of "real" sugar mixed with Stevia to achieve a more traditional sugar taste (otherwise the Stevia can have an "artificial" taste). Benefits: Stevia is a natural growing herb that has no calories and no glycemic index so there is no negative effect on the body. Maple syrup has minerals and vitamins and raw sugar is more complex and takes longer for the body to breakdown. All leave no toxic build up of chemicals in your cells the way artificial sweeteners do.

~Use organic or natural products on your body. Your skin is your largest organ and is a direct line into your internal system. It absorbs much of what it comes into contact with. An easy and inexpensive way to make the switch is to buy your organic lotions and potions through a mail-order catalog. I get all of my supplements from Swanson Vitamins and they carry a nice supply of organic body products, too. Brands I have used and enjoy are Jason Cosmetic, Desert Essence, Derma E, Burts Bee's, NOW Foods (sweet almond oil makes a great body and hair moisturizer) & Alba Botanica. I also find a great cream shave, vitamin E oil and makeup removing towelettes at Trader Joe's http://www.traderjoes.com/ (If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you I am sorry you live there!). Benefits: No artificial, harmful or toxic ingredients will be absorbed into your blood stream and you are not slathering up your body in plastic.

~Use deodorant sin anti-perspirant (Tom's of Maine has a good one at Trader Joe's or Swanson Vitamins). You may sweat a little bit more but if you use an anti-bacterial soap to wash with (good one of those at Trader Joe's, too) and shave daily (ladies) any odor should be undetectable. Benefits: No absorption of aluminum into your blood stream.

~Stop eating out of boxes and packages and start cooking! Eat food that you have to make. Yes I know it is a pain in the ass and is totally time consuming but this is your life we are talking about here! Eat vegetables, fruits, whole grains, natural meats, low-fat dairy and limited amounts of fat and sweet. Sorry to sound like such a buzz-kill but you will be amazed at how much better you eat and how much better you will feel.

~Stay tuned for more, I will post as I discover...

Thanks for joining,
Leah