Seeking and Finding Wholeness

I had no idea, but thanks to Wikipedia, now I do and so do you. Some people hate the FREE internet, the free internet doesnt serve the elite, power hungry, and profit-minded interests.. But, the free internet is so crucial, it allowed humanity to connect, share, and offer an age of knowledge and free exchange of ideas… We dont want to lose that. Read on:

To: English Wikipedia Readers and Community
From: Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director
Date: January 16, 2012

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate—that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

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“One key to successful relationships is learning to say “no” without guilt,

so that you can say “yes” without resentment.”

~ Bill Crawford

I constantly find myself seeing things differently than people I am with. Cultural norms that people accept as divine laws to live by amaze me every single day. I remember asking “but why” as far back as my memory goes. I probably asked “why” as a baby before I could even talk.

I’d see people do a certain thing, say certain things,  or react in certain ways, then I’d ask myself “why”? I asked why because the actions did not seem positive, or seemed lacking in judgment, logic, or respect. Asking “why” meant that something did not make sense to me.

If I verbalized my questions I usually heard unsatisfying answer, most of the time  the answers went like this: “because that is the culture”, or “because it’s in the bible”, or (this may be my favorite one) “because this is what people do”. Some may call you “weird” for questioning “what people do”. Years went by, my questions never got an answer.

Today, I have much more insight into human reasoning and behavior, coupled with love and understanding. Thanks to hypnosis, varied life experiences and guidance, I understand why people do things better.

Understanding something doesn’t mean I agree with it though. It also doesn’t mean I stopped asking “why”. I continue to ask “why” now purely from sheer amazement.

One simple, yet very common example that I came across recently was being at a party, with alcoholic beverages, and seeing a gal tell her friend “have another drink.”  When the friend indicated a “no”, the gal insisted and asked again trying to be more persuasive.

This made me shake my head in disagreement, I probably gave the persons a shocked look as well. I hide my opinions less than I used to do as a kid, some people don’t like that. I don’t care.

Replace the alcoholic beverage seen here with food, fashion, cars, work, computer games, opinions, actions, pretty much anything that a person (a groups, an institution, organization etc) may ask you to do (or think) because they think “it is cool”, or because “it is the way people do things.”

Now, if you take a moment to think about this, you may start notice how common this example is.

If your friend was a true friend, she/he would RESPECT your wishes and opinions. When you say “no” to any idea, a “real friend” would immediately respect your “no”, they will smile and move on to another issue out of sheer respect for you. It’s true that your friend my have the idea that drinking more means “you are having more fun”, she/he may want to see you have more fun based on their understanding of “having fun”, but if you said “no”, for whatever reason then a “no” is a “no”.

You do not need persuasion, you do not need someone to tell you how to have fun. YOU are the one having fun, you decide what fun is to you.

When your gut feeling, desires, or simple leanings go in one direction, if you are happy doing a certain thing, and are then faced with a friend (or anyone for that matter) telling you that this is “not how people have fun”, be bold and say “No.”,

“This is how I have fun.” “This is how I enjoy life”.

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Greetings and salutations!

the following is a message that I feel is very worthy of sharing with those of us who are seeking wholeness, especially on this day many call “valentines day”. This message was sent out yesterday from the founder and leader of Young Living brand essential oils. if you don’t know who or what i’m talking about then here’s my quick shpeel: Young Living is passionate and serious about producing therapeutic-grade products; Gary has the strictest standards for purity, potency and safety when it comes to the essential oils that Young Living produces, and he is passionate about bringing a higher quality of life to all of the world. if you are new to ‘essential oils’, they can be considered, but are far from limited to the word aromatherapy. they are basically considered the blood of a plant/tree/fruit/flower and this blood contains enormous healing potential, and is imbued with the intelligence of nature.

I am a distributor of these oils-
i use them in a variety of ways daily, on myself, on dogs, and in my massage and healing practice, so i have stories from using the oils myself, as well as from other people over the last year and a half, since I first heard about Young Living.

i hope you have a wonderful valentine’s day! know that i love you, and care for you so very much. You are an invaluable piece of the giant Cosmic Puzzle, I will say. and that is no small thing! I mean, your ability to realize grander dreams and desires for ourselves and others, is important. Your health, happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction in life IS IMPORTANT. i think you came here to this thing we call “Life” to evolve and achieve deeper fulfillment in your own unique and perfect way. And really, right here and now, you are doing that just perfectly. You are perfect, whole and complete. You are lovely. I love you!

if you would like to get to know more about the Young Living essential oils on your own, you can click here or just get in touch with me.

peace!

~angie

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you … See More spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, It is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

Mother Teresa

Winona LaDuke, is an Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabeg and is the mother of three children. Winona is the Program Director of Honor the Earth and Founding Director of White Earth Land Recovery Project.

Leading Honor the Earth she provides vision and leadership for the organization’s Regranting Program and its Strategic Initiatives.  In addition, she has worked for two decades on the land issues of the White Earth Reservation, including litigation, over land rights in the 1980’s.  In 1989, she received the Reebok Human Rights Award, with which in part she began the White Earth Land Recovery Project.

In 1994, Winona was nominated by Time Magazine as one of America’s fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age, and has also been awarded the Thomas Merton Award in 1996, the Ann Bancroft Award, Ms. Woman of the Year Award (with the Indigo Girls in 1997), the Global Green Award, and numerous other honors. A graduate of Harvard and Antioch Universities, she has written extensively on Native American and environmental issues.

Her books include: Last Standing Woman (fiction), All Our Relations (non-fiction), In the Sugarbush (Children’s), and The Winona LaDuke Reader.

To show respect to all of her work, I post this article about Winona LaDuke under the Best Of category.

For more information, visit: http://nativeharvest.com.

mad as hell doctors.com - Where the rubber gloves meet the road

For those who have doubts about where doctors stand on the public option, this recent survey of doctors should help.

New England Journal of Medicine: 73% support a public option

New England Journal of Medicine article

NPR:
NPR article

This is a good cartoon video titled ‘Why We Need Government-Run Universal Socialized Health Insurance‘. It explains why we need a public health insurance option or some sort of a government-run health system in the US.

The video compares Health Insurance to the fire department in a very effective manner. I’d like to add that fire departments used to be private and for profit in Chicago, then came the Chicago fire. After the Chicago fire the fire department was socialized to distribute risk and lower cost.

It’s ironic that nowadays fire department remain socialized, and work very well. We all expect the fire fighters to show up at a phone’s call, yet when your own body, your own intestines, brains, or heart are on fire (i.e. sick/ill) you cannot get the attention needed, since the system is so very broken.

Enjoy the video:

Animated by Andy Lubershane. More comics at http://www.earthlycomics.blogspot.com

Text transcript of the video:

Why we need government-run universal, socialized, call it what you want, health insurance.

We all know from basic civil class, or just being alive, that a lot of essential services are already government-run, universal, socialized, whatever you wanna call it.

Think water treatment, police, fire, postal service, coast guard, all those things you know are gonna be there for you, every single day without even thinking about them. We all pay our taxes and the government uses the money to pay for the things everyone needs just to get by.

Now, health care is just as essential as any of these services. Sure, a few of us may be lucky enough to make it through our whole lives without any medical problem but the rest of us depend on health care at some point in our lives just to get by. Besides its essentialness, there’s another reason health insurance is just like those government run, universal, socialized, whatever you wanna call them services, that’s this: There are very very few people that can afford to pay on their own the cost of health care when disaster strikes and they or someone they love gets really really sick.

So, we all need insurance, which basically means when we pool our money together enough so what when anyone of us gets really really sick there’s enough money in the pool to pay for that person to get better, that’s insurance.

But, who should we choose to manage the pool of our money and give out our money to the people who need it? Well, private insurance companies are the ones that we are using right now, but there’s a problem. On average, these companies take 10 – 20 cents out of every dollar we put in the pool.

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Many stare at the letters stacked next to a psychologist, counselor, therapist or another mental/social health professional and wonder what these letters really mean.

These letters are abbreviations that indicate professional licenses and certificates that a particular health professional has.

In this article I am listing all the licenses and certificates within the mental health profession (that I am aware of). To find the graduate degrees these professionals need read my previous article “All The Mental Health Degrees”

Here’s the list:

LCSW, ACSW, LCS, LICSW, CSW
These are used by licensed clinical social workers.  A licensed clinical social worker has a graduate academic degree, has completed supervised clinical work experience and has passed a national- or state-certified licensing exam.

This advanced practitioner holds a license that allows him or her to receive health-care insurance reimbursements.

(Source: National Association of Social Workers)

LMFT or MFCC

MFT stands for Marriage and Family Therapist. A licensed marriage and family therapist has a graduate academic degree (a 2- to 3-year master’s degree or a 3- to 5-year doctoral degree) along with clinical work experience. This therapist has passed a state-certified licensing exam.

Most states offer this license. Along with the two- to three-year full-time masters programs with a practicum and internship, LMFTs are required to complete 1,000 to 2,000 hours of individual or family therapy with 100 hours of supervision. This can take one to three years.

(Source: American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists)

LP or NCPsyA

The licensed psychoanalyst has obtained his license from the state department of education (requirements vary from state to state).

Recipients of this license must have a master’s degree or higher, and must complete psychoanalytic study in a program deemed qualified by the state DOE.

An LP must complete a supervised psychoanalysis program and pass a state-certified examination.

(Source: New York State Department of Education)

LPC or LCPC, LPCC, LMHC, DAC, MFCC
These stand for licensed professional counselor, licensed professional clinical counselor or licensed mental health counselor. These licenses are granted to those who have advanced training, a graduate academic degree, clinical work experience and have passed a state-certified licensing examination.

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If you are considering attending a school to become a mental health professional (counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, etc) you probably found that you have many degree options. Psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counselor, social workers and others have different degree and licensing options.

If you are considering seeking assistance from a mental health practitioner but feel lost when you see the different degrees and their abbreviations, this article will help you.

This article compiles all the academic degrees that all kinds of mental health professionals need to acquire. In the next article I will discuss all the certificates and licenses used by mental health professionals.

Let’s start:

PhD
PhD stands for a Doctor of philosophy. This academic degree is earned after anywhere from four to seven years of graduate study.

Many psychologists, therapists, counselors and coaches hold a doctorate of philosophy.

A PhD in psychology emphasizes research and teaches theory as well as statistics and data gathering. A lot of the PhD holders work in academic settings, as professors or researchers.

If a PhD graduate who does not work in academic setting usually practices as a Psychologist. Psychologist are fully trained in the assessment and treatment of all behavioral conditions ( i.e. anxiety, depression, anger, etc).

(Source: American Psychological Association)

PsyD

PsyD stands for Doctor of psychology. PsyD focuses on therapy and counseling rather than research.

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How will our world change if women were to rule?

I read an article titled “Woman, Be Silent” by Teresa Silverthorn a few weeks ago. The article started by mentioning a legend about the first civilization of humanity, where women held the authoritative power over the male community, and were created solely for supervisory reasons. Then the men took over the power of the community using trickery.

The article continues on, here are some excerpts:

Today. Our daughters are dressed in push-up bras, slinky clothing, with low self-esteem. They are used by the media to sell. They are used by the media to provoke.

They are used, and remain silent. They are exploited, and remain silent, thinking this is their only way to survive. They were taught this by their mothers, who barely survived. But, did so, by remaining silent.

I have seen how women sometimes hurt themselves indirectly when they force their daughters to abide by cultural expectations and by how they raise their male children. They are not to blame though, women around the globe have power because they raise tomorrow’s generation, but they are restricted in their ability to change the generations; they are bound by pre-established systems that they live in and depend on.

The restrictions that women face stem from the way in which the current systems of life are set up, we can call these systems the systems of living; what I mean is that the current laws, cultures and expectations of women all depend on the systems of living.

People live up to what is asked of them, many personalities are shaped by the cultures they are exposed to, individuals rise or sink due to these systems of living. The way people see themselves depends to a large extent on the systems of living they find themselves in. The same is true with women. Even an essential question like ‘what it means to be a woman’ in its entirety is determined by that woman’s interactions with the systems of living.

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I would like to present these notions to you, do you agree with me?

Any injustice, anywhere, in the world is too much to tolerate.

Any sick person is one too many. Any hungry person is one too many.

Any hateful crime anywhere in the world is as bad as a hateful crime against me.

Any poor and helpless person on the planet, is just one minute away from being me.

Anything that I would hate on myself I hate on anyone else, if not for moral reasons then at the least because this person could have been me.

What if it was Me?

Tomorrow, March 28, 2009, at 8:30 PM local time  is Earth Hour.

You can join in easily, all you have to do is turn off  all your lights for one hour!

Join the rest of the world and turn off your lights for 1 hour only.

Turn out.   Take action. Be part of this historic event.

You don’t really have to sign up on the Earth Hour website. This is but a small personal action to show support to our mother Earth, it can also be fun

Some of the things you could do during this hour include a romantic candle light dinner, going on a walk or meditating! ..

Find out more here:  http://www.earthhourus.org/

Does Evil exist? This article has an excerpt from an interview with Carl Jung and he is seen clearly saying that man is the origin of evil. That is, humans are the origin of all evil.

Some very interesting questions to ask yourself after you watch this interview:

• What makes a person Evil, their thoughts or their actions?
• We can all agree that the only evil species on this planet is Humans, correct?
• Why are we evil?
• Not to diminish the badness of ‘evil’, but can we break evilness down to attributes such as selfishness and stupidity as the prime causes for evil thoughts and actions?

Many people, including Carl Jung, say that “we are the evil” on this planet..

The conclusion here is, if you fear evil then fear people.

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I don’t think that ADD is a disorder nor a disease. I know many parents may disagree with me, however I believe that I’ve done enough research to reach this conclusion.

I started a discussion thread here. Feel free to join the discussion and contribute your opinions/experiences.

I know a few that agree that ADD is not a disorder or a disease, one example that comes to mind is Thom Hartman an author on the subject of ADD/ADHD.

I strongly oppose drugging children that are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, If I had kids I won’t let them go on “medication” to treat this “disorder”.

Mood altering drugs, in my opinion, are not medications, and ADD is not a disorder, simply a personality type.

Watch the Oceti Sakowin: The People of the Seven Council Fires documentary now online for free

Summary

Running time: 59 minutes (Watch Now Online)

Watch Trailer:

Watch the trailer for the documentary entitled “Oceti Sakowin: The People of the Seven Council Fires” below.

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Find the documentary “Oceti Sakowin:The People Of The Seven Council Fires” on PBS, Find pictures and listen to music:

http://www.aptv.org/schedule/nolaschedule.asp?NOLA1=OCET

Read more…

This is part 4 of the series of articles entitled “The People of the Seven Council Fires – Documentary Summary“. Find part one here, part two here, part three here.

This article is about Family and the new way of life the Oyate were forced into.

Relationships are very important to the Oyate. If you were an Oyate you can make new relatives, by adopting someone as a relative, as a mother, son, sister or brother.

Social structure

The social structure is one of an extended family.

The men assume the role of the protector, provider and leadership.

Women

Women maintain the household. Women are viewed as nurturers & educators.

Women educate the children until a certain age, when boys go with men mentors and women stay under the womens’ mentorship

Grandmothers are usually the educators of the young

Women owned the house and tipi

Ethnic Cleansing

The Lakota were men of peace, lived in balance with creation and addressed all creation as relatives, they were relatives with the white buffalo

The Lakota was the last of tribes to resit the US military, odds and numbers were against them and eventually they worse faced with a new way of life.

Treaties were made and broken. Land was taken. People were forced into farming, and into boarding schools that were basically functioning in a Catholic school system. Further, families broken apart and separated, men and women and children separated.

Their roles were taken away. The women could no longer teach and nurture their children who were taken away from them; the men had no buffalo to hunt and mentoring to give.

The rationale for the boarding schools was, as Carlisle founder Richard Henry Pratt often said, to “kill the Indian and save the man.” But the actual reason was economic: By taking away the children, the U.S. government was able to take away and maintain control of the Indian land base.

Alcohol & drugs came into their lives when reservations started; the buffalo was replaced by rations as part of a government ration system.

The Oral tradition ended; now Cathlic nuns taught children and provided the children protection, someone else was providing for the children.

It was against the law to be Lakota from 1880 to 1978 !!!

In the 1950’s 100% of the Lakota denied their indiannes and they did not speak in Lakota.

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Read these and try to learn how to say I Love You, who knows, you may need this knowledge some day. Let’s start,

Afrikaans – Ek het jou lief
Albanian – Te dua
Arabic – Ana behibak (to male)
Arabic – Ana behibek (to female)
Armenian – Yes kez sirumem
Bambara – M’bi fe
Bengali – Ami tomake bhalobashi (pronounced: Amee toe-ma-kee bhalo-bashee)
Belarusian – Ya tabe kahayu
Bisaya – Nahigugma ako kanimo
Bulgarian – Obicham te
Cambodian – Soro lahn nhee ah

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I am proposing renaming Christmas and calling it Shopathon because that is all what people do in preparation for xmas, they shop. Everybody agrees that Christmas has been highly commercialized in the U.S. Many say that it has lost its true meaning of celebrating Jesus’ birthday. I agree than Christmas has lost its meaning, the lost meaning is what I will debate here.

Christmas in the US and most the western Christian tradition does not fall on the correct date of Jesus’ birthday, so what are WE really celebrating? Are we celebrating a lie?

The fact is, no one knows for sure when Jesus was born. So where did Christmas come from? It is believed Jesus was born in the Spring, then why is Christmas in the Winter season?

Winter Celebrations

Why then does Christmas fall on Dec 25? Well, when Christianity spread in lands that practiced paganism, naturally pagan practices and traditions were not appreciated by christian leaders. Winter celebrations were major traditions that pagans would not abandon. They had to be re-named and adopted by the, then new religion, Christianity.

Winter Solstice falls on Dec 25th and was one major pagan holiday celebration.

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti means “the birthday of the unconquered Sun.” The use of the title Sol Invictus allowed several solar deities to be worshipped collectively, including Elah-Gabal, a Syrian sun god; Sol, the god of Emperor Aurelian; and Mithras, a soldiers’ god of Persian origin. Emperor Elagabalus introduced the festival, and it reached the height of its popularity under Aurelian, who promoted it as an empire-wide holiday. This day had held no significance in the Roman festive calendar until it was introduced in the third century.

The festival was placed on the date of the solstice because this was on this day that the Sun reversed its southward retreat and proved itself to be “unconquered.” Several early Christian writers connected the rebirth of the sun to the birth of Jesus. “O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born

From Wikipedia

You are probably seeing where this is going now. Rather than abolish these traditions they were allowed to remain only after re-purposing and re-branding them into a Christian tradition.

Winter festivals were common in ancient times due to less agricultural work, expectations of better weather in the summer and the celebration of the rebirth of the sun as the sun lasted longer in the sky (a countdown to summer).

The Roman Pagans

Roman pagans celebrated the holiday of Saturnalia. This was a week-long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the week-long celebration. This holiday featured some ‘bad’ behavior to say the least like drinking to get drunk, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (later morphing into the modern caroling).

In what seems to be even more horrible, each Roman community selected a victim. This person was forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. On December 25th (the festival’s last day), this person was brutally murdered. Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by doing so.

Saturnalia festival was a major festival that pagans would not abandon. In order to convert pagans to Christianity it was decided to adopt the Sturnalia festival. As a result a large numbers of pagans became Christian after being promised to be allowed to continue celebrating the Saturnalia festival.

Since there was no significance to that date of the year, Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday replacing the original festival’s concluding day

The Scandinavian Pagans

Pagan Scandinavians celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held in the late December to early January period. As Northern Europe was the last part to Christianize, its pagan traditions had a major influence on Christmas. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. In English, the word Yule is synonymous with Christmas.

You see? We are not celebrating the real Christmas (Jesus’ b’day) on Dec 25.

Winter Festivals were very common! Here are but a few examples:

Brazilians

Brazilian archeologists have found an assembly of 127 granite blocks arranged equidistant from each other. They apparently form an ancient astronomical observatory. One of the stones marked the position of the sun at the time of the winter solstice and were probably used in religious rituals.

Egyptians

The god-man/savior Osiris died and was entombed on DEC-21. “At midnight, the priests emerged from an inner shrine crying ‘The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing” and showing the image of a baby to the worshipers.”

Greek

The winter solstice ritual was called Lenaea, the Festival of the Wild Women. In very ancient times, a man representing the harvest god Dionysos was torn to pieces and eaten by a gang of women on this day. Later in the ritual, Dionysos would be reborn as a baby. By classical times, the human sacrifice had been replaced by the killing of a goat. The women’s role had changed to that of funeral mourners and observers of the birth.

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Have you ever realized that every person is annoying to someone? You may have many people that love the dirt that you walk on and hold you in high regard, but it also follows that there are people out there that find you annoying, and thus dislike you.

To all of you who loose sleep over being popular or being liked by others, I say Quit It!  Just be who you are because there is no point in trying to be liked by everyone, it is simply impossible.

Rather than living your life trying to be liked by others how about stopping for a sec to ask yourself if YOU like yourself? Are you annoyed by who you are, who you’ve become, who others want you to be?

Yes you are annoying to others, and there is nothing you can do to change that. As long as you are not annoying to people that you deeply care for / live with you and as long as you are not harming others, you should be just fine

Ultimately, as long as you are happy with who you are, that is all that matters. You get closer to being whole when you are well and when you are aware of and understand who you are. With this awareness you also see how seeking others’ approval and admiration is absolutely a waste of energy and time and is not the way to live your life.

not in wf

I used multiple resources and created a comprehensive wellness tracker work sheet that you could use to track everything related to your wellness (physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, etc..). I put this in a PDF format here for anyone to download free of charge. No registration required, simply right click and save the file.

Click here to download the Complete Personal Wellness Tracker

I had a few nutrition classes over the years, I also have a few books that had sheets you could use to track food intake. The problem with these sheets is that they don’t track enough. A person is not just what s/he eats, we are complex (emotional, mental, spiritual, etc..) beings and there are a lot of (inner and outer) environmental variables that effect us.

One day at a physical therapy meeting, the physical therapist suggested I track my food intake to find what is causing my migraines. He suggested using a tracking sheet very similar to the one I am giving away here. He then made a comment that these sheets only track food intake, so they ignore many other things.

It felt as if he read my mind. I took that thought and did the research, comparisons, and came up with this tracker sheet that will help you track way more than just food intake. It tracks many variables that ultimately have an effect on your overall wellness.

You now can keep track of your expectations, emotions, sleep, mood, weather, physical exercise, plus more.

This sheet is self explanatory, I hope that no instructions are needed. My only instruction to you is to remember this sheet is a self-help tool. Use it for your own benefit, no one will read it so don’t worry about spelling and neatness, this is for you only, to help you track variables that may be effecting your wellness. As long as you can make sense of your notes then you’ve been successful in tracking the variables.

There is no such thing as a perfect tracking sheet. This one is a general attempt to facilitate to the needs of many. You now have to take it and personalize it. If you have something you want to track that is not on this sheet, simply write it in, any white space will do, the margins and bottom part of the sheet are god spots for these additional notes.

Once enough data has been collected you could reflect back at the notes, and see patterns, find behavior, thoughts or actions and what effects they produce.

Your feedback is important, this is not the first version, and will not be the last. If you want to ad a variable to track please let me know. I am working on the next version and will publish it once it’s completed.

I give this away to you, asking for nothing, sending you wishes of well being.

Stay well.

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CSA is a socio-economic model of food production, sales, and distribution aimed at both increasing the quality of food and the quality of care given the land, plants and animals – while substantially reducing potential food losses and financial risks for the producers. It is also a method for small-scale commercial farmers and gardeners to have a successful, small-scale closed market. CSA’s focus is usually on a system of weekly delivery or pick-up of vegetables, sometimes also flowers, fruits, herbs and even milk or meat products in some cases. A variety of production and economic sub-systems are in use worldwide.

How The CSA System Works

CSA generally is the practice of focusing on the production of high quality foods using ecological, organic or biodynamic farming methods. This kind of farming operates with a much greater-than-usual degree of involvement of consumers and other stakeholders—resulting in a stronger than usual consumer-producer relationship. The core design includes developing a cohesive consumer group that is willing to fund a whole season’s budget in order to get quality foods. The system has many variations on how the farm budget is supported by the consumers and how the producers then deliver the foods. By CSA theory, the more a farm embraces whole-farm, whole-budget support, the more it can focus on quality and reduce the risk of food waste or financial loss.

In its most formal and structured European and North American form, CSAs focus on having:

• A transparent, whole season budget for producing a specified wide array of products for a set number of weeks a year;
• A common-pricing system where producers and consumers discuss and democratically agree to pricing based on the acceptance of the budget; and
• A ‘shared risk and reward’ agreement, i.e. that the consumers eat what the farmers grow even with the vagaries of seasonal growing.

Individuals, families or groups do not pay for x pounds or kilograms of produce, but rather support the budget of the whole farm and receive weekly what is seasonally ripe. This approach eliminates the marketing risks and costs for the producer and an enormous amount of time, often manpower too, and allows producers to focus on quality care of soils, crops, animals, co-workers—and on serving the customers. There is little to no loss (i.e. waste) in this system, since the producers know in advance who they are growing for and how much to grow, etc.

Some confusion about the CSA system has arisen as some CSAs are less whole-budget, whole-farm oriented and have more the character of subscription farming. This kind of arrangement is also referred to as crop-sharing or box schemes. In such cases, farmers often simply set the weekly prices and retain a high level of risk, marketing costs and so on. Thus there is an important distinction between the producers (farmers, gardeners, etc.) selling shares in the upcoming season’s harvest or selling a weekly subscription that includes x, y, z amounts of produce. In all cases, participants contribute a pre-agreed amount (sometimes an equal amount, sometimes variable) and in return receive a weekly harvest.

Some farms are dedicated entirely to CSA, while others also sell through on-farm stands, farmers’ markets, and other channels. Most CSAs are owned by the farmers, while some offer shares in the farm as well as the harvest. Consumers have organized their own CSA projects, going as far as renting land and hiring farmers.

Typically, CSA farms are small, independent, labor-intensive, family farms. Many CSAs practice ecological, organic or biodynamic agriculture, avoiding pesticides and inorganic fertilizers.

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Disaster and Disease are similar. There are only a few places on Earth that are not prone to natural disasters, this will get worse as global warming intensifies. People face disaster and disease on regular basis. When disaster or disease hits and a person becomes weakened and vulnerable, shouldn’t this person be helped by the government (i.e. others who are healthy)?

I beleive that we need to design our social and economical systems, our infrastructure, and our lives to coexist with Earth. We should build buildings that can withstand all extremes of Earth based on the region, as well as homes that enhance nature (blend in, add aesthetic value, be green, energy efficient, etc..) that ultimately do no harm to Earth.

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The Eight (*see comments below) Dimensions of Wellness are:

1. Emotional Wellness
2. Environmental Wellness
3. Intellectual Wellness
4. Occupational Wellness
5. Physical Wellness
6. Social Wellness
7. Spiritual Wellness
8. Vocational Wellness

Read about Wellness and the definition of wellness.

Please note that Interpersonal Wellness and Multicultural Wellness are considered the same as Social Wellness.

What is Social Wellness? Social wellness refers to having and receiving a socially friendly attitude from people and a respectful attitude from the state. It refers to external safety. Social wellness means being aware of, participating in, and feeling connected to your community. It means developing healthy relationships with those around you. Social Wellness encourages contribution to the welfare of the community.

Social Wellness is also known as Interpersonal Wellness or as Multicultural Wellness. Below you will find a list defining Social Wellness; this list contains the most commonly agreed upon items.

Social wellness means:

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Wellness doesn’t mean not being sick. Wellness is a dynamic process of change and growth. There are many recognized and interrelated dimensions of wellness such as: Physical, Social, Emotional, Spiritual, Occupational, Intellectual, and Environmental. All the dimension are crucial to the pursuit of wellness.

Wellness refers to a healthy balance of the mind, body and spirit. Wellness results in an overall feeling of well-being. To pursue wholeness you have to pursue wellness.

In the west, wellness has been used in the context of alternative medicine and holistic healing since Halbert L. Dunn, M.D. began using the phrase “high level wellness” in the fifties, based on lectures at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A.

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