I recently heard writer and author Alexandra Franzen say that Americans are more likely to spend 90% of their earnings on business related and money making endeavors than personal care.

I was surprised to hear someone from outside the health arena say this, so I searched for a footnote to support what she said.

CNN Money says that Americans actually spend less than 10% of what they make on personal care.

With the ways the modern lifestyle impacts the state of health and the rise of chronic disease, and the subsequent ways this state of declining health impacts next generations, healthy can no longer be assumed a birth rite.

Were you born healthy? 

To be healthy means to actively choose personal care practices that promote healthy, and to seek ways to counter the pull of the modern lifestyle and the ravages it can cause on your wellbeing.

Healthy is a choice, it’s intentional and it’s planned for and pursued.

Personal care is not a negotiable quotient in the division of your resources.

Healthy is where everything begins … and ends.

Want to create vibrant health and soaring energy in 2016 with results that last? Want to dive into creating healthy as a choice and the priority it is? Check out my online program, 10 Years Younger in Six Weeks, to look and feel your very best … and so much more! Check out the program here.

1000 Tips to Reduce Stress.

Kind of an oxymoron, no? By the time you’d finish reading a list of 1000 tips to reduce stress, you’d likely be more stressed!

But business guru’s do suggest lists. They say ‘you’ love lists. “Write blog posts or create events with 5 Tips. 6 Points. 8 Ideas … ”

I get it. Lists are simple and straightforward chunks of ‘stuff’ to easily take in, and in this era of information overload ‘they’ say tweetable soundbites work.

I hosted a teleseminar the other day, 10 Tips for Healthy and Happy Holidays, and I delivered exactly what is suggested and everybody loved it, 10 easily accessible and bite-sized ideas to choose health and calm in the season of excess and indulgence. Here are the 10 Tips:

• Eat before you go to an event, or even before you go holiday shopping to reduce the risk of binge, emotional or exhaustion eating.
• If you’re going out to eat with friends or family, call the restaurant ahead of time to preorder a healthy meal that delights and satisfies you.
• Stock your office and car, briefcase and handbag with a green apple, to make sure you always have a healthy snack on hand.
• Pack a small bar of 75% chocolate in your handbag or suit jacket to indulge in a treat, with out going overboard.
• Where form-fitting clothes to reduce over-indulgence.
• Avoid hanging out around snack tables at parties, to reduce mindless eating.
• Limit alcohol consumption. Alcohol dehydrates, lowers the healthy pH balance of the body, reduces clear decision making, and affects healthy sleep patterns.
• Sit next to healthy eaters.
• Be the healthy role model you’d want to have at an event.
• Plan your indulgences ahead of time so you feel both in-control of your healthy choices and festive with your family and friends. By planning ahead, you’ll find it much easier to choose healthy throughout the holiday season, because you know your treat is coming up!

But … truth be told, you need do only one thing to enjoy happy and healthy holidays.

One soundbite to reduce stress.

One tweetable tweet to feel happy, healthy and in balance during the holiday season.

Reconnect.

Reconnect to you. Reconnect to what matters most to you. Reconnect to why you do everything you do.

If you connect to you, if you connect to your Highest self, every choice you make will emanate from that Higher state of being. What you eat. What you drink. When you go to bed. Who you spend time with. What you do. What you don’t do. Everything you choose to do, and everything you choose not to do will be sourced by your commitment to be your very best self, so the list becomes sort of …  irrelevant.

The tips are super helpful, but pale next to a reconnected and empowered you.

Have you ever said something or done something that you intuitively knew was not your best you? Have you ever felt disconnected from your best self?

I'd love to hear what you've done to reconnect to you in the comments box below.

What if I told you that you never have to experience dry, flaky winter skin again?

What if I told you that the remedy would also purify your body, bring a glow and firmness back to your skin, and it would cost you nothing but the price of a good natural body brush and 2-5 minutes of your time every day?

Your skin is your largest organ, known as your third kidney, yet is largely neglected beyond the facial care where exfoliation is highly regarded for rejuvenation. Think about it, when was the last time you exfoliated your body?

Hello Dry Body Brushing.

Dry body brushing feels invigorating, exfoliates dead skin cells, plus it boosts new skin cell growth! But the benefits far exceed renewed skin. By removing the top layer of dry, flaky skin, you stimulate your lymphatic system, improve blood circulation and support your body’s overall ability to cleanse, detoxify and eliminate waste.

Supporting a healthy flow of lymph is important because the lymphatic system is integral to you maintaining a healthy immune system. It defends against infection with the rest of the immune system and helps balance body fluids.

Dry body brushing breaks down the accumulation of toxic waste matter in your body’s fat cells known as cellulite. By increasing blood circulation in your skin, you increase the flow of oxygen to your cells and help your body eliminate the trapped toxins causing dimpling in your skin to reduce and eliminate cellulite.

Plus, many aestheticians believe that dry body brushing improves digestion and kidney function, because the skin is better able to support the elimination of toxic waste matter.

I offer several natural bristle dry brushes in my online store. There are many formats. All are good and based on personal preference and the benefits each offers. Some are long handled, some have no handle. Some are created for your face only. I recommend trying several to find and incorporate the ones that you like best. Pictured here is one of my all time favorites, but I’ve now incorporated a long handle brush and a facial brush too. Click here to learn more about skin care and looking and feel you very best ever!

The How to Dry Body Brush

Dry body brush before you shower.

Start at your feet, and brush both the bottoms and tops. Move up your calves, to your thighs in long, even strokes. Guide every stroke towards your heart to increase lymph flow and blood circulation as you move up your body to your abdomen, palms, arms, back and chest. Apply circular strokes on your buttocks for easier application.

I recommend at least 2-5 minutes for dry body brushing daily, but do note, 1) your skin may feel tender when you first start out so gage your time accordingly, and 2) you will soon grow addicted to this healthy regiment because it feels so darn good!

Finish with a natural body oil, like cold-pressed organic coconut oil.

You will notice softer, smoother skin in just a few days!

I’d love to hear what you think about this technique.

I look forward to your comments in the box below ... and please do raise any questions you have!

Gratefulness 2015

As Thanksgiving approaches in the states, as everyone prepares for the day set aside to give thanks, I am reminded how the force of gratefulness can turn every moment around. How showing thankfulness even when challenged can bring a sigh of relief. How finding appreciation in the simplest of things makes not-enough, a pure, unadulterated blessing. Those moments when the force of appreciation makes the seemingly impossible, possible.

I know these moments.

I’ve experienced the shifts gratefulness makes possible when it seemed nothing could possibly go my way. I’ve experienced the change in perspective gratefulness revealed to me when I chose to choose a better feeling thought. I’ve experienced the precious joy of life in moments when I couldn’t even imagine something good coming from a dark moment.

Gratefulness changed, and continues to change my life. It’s a rocking, timeless mind hack, an epic tool to create a winning game. 

I offer you a list of some of my favorite quotes from my some of my all-time favorite people, quotes that spark(ed) awesome shifts within me, even as I gather them for you now, but at the end … oh, read all the way through because I’ve got a very special Gaelic treat for you at the end, with much grateful love in between.

May this list contribute to your grateful heart this holiday season … and always. 

“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”  ~ Anthony Robbins

Gratitude and acknowledgment are essential components in creating and attracting what you want in your life. Through the expression of gratitude on a daily basis, you align yourself to receive all the good the universe has to offer.

By simply focusing your thoughts and attention on the abundance that is already present in your life, you will literally shift your energy to a positive vibration that will automatically and effortlessly attract even more to be grateful for. ~ Jack Canfield

“May the gratitude in my heart kiss all the Universe.” ~ Hafiz

Be in a state of gratitude for everything that shows up in your life. Be thankful for the storms as well as the smooth sailing. What is the lesson or gift in what you are experiencing right now? Find your joy not in what’s missing in your life but in how you can serve. ~ Wayne Dyer

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love—then make that day count!” ~ Steve Maraboli

A Question

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth. ~Robert Frost

“With nothing to compare yourself to, aren’t you perfect!” ~Byron Katie

Gratitude Is Our Essential Nature. Gratitude is an inherent quality that resides within each of us. It’s both a feeling and an attitude. Gratitude begins by looking within and appreciating the value of one’s experiences. ~ Deepak Chopra

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”  ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

“What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.” ~ Brené Brown

I am grateful for the life that pulsates around me. I tune into the sensation of my body, the touch of the soft, wool sweater against my skin, the touch of my fingers against my leggings, the beating of my heart. I am grateful for this body that I inhabit. I tune into my thoughts as they float about in my mind, fading in and out. I watch them curiously wondering where they are coming from and to where they are going. I am grateful for my mind for allowing me to think, feel, create, wonder and reason. I tune my awareness to the center of my chest where my heart resides. I feel a sense of spaciousness and openness and am grateful for this resting place. I open my eyes slowly and gently and give thanks for this moment. ~Sharon Salzberg

“When before the beauty of a sunset or a mountain, you pause and exclaim, “Ah,” you are participating in divinity.” ~ Joseph Campbell

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur at some point, If this isn’t good, I don’t know what is.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.” ~ Maya Angelou

I want to feel deeply, and whenever I am brokenhearted I emerge more compassionate. I think I allow myself to be brokenhearted more easily, knowing I won’t be irrevocably shattered. ~ Sylvia Boorstein

“An attitude of gratitude brings great things.”  ~ Yogi Bhajan

“If you would stop analyzing everything and just look for things to appreciate, you would live happily ever after.” ~ Abraham-Hicks

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. ~ Melody Beattie

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love—then make that day count!” ~ Steve Maraboli

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ~ John F. Kennedy

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Gratitude is an opener of locked-up blessings.” ~ Marianne Williamson

A Gratitude Affirmation, ~Janice Lynne Lundy

Thank you.
Thank you for this breath,
for this life,
this beingness that is me, that is You,
that is the breath of all beings everywhere.
Root me in kindness.
Grow me with love.
Let “Thank You” by my refuge and my joy.

And in closing, my very favorite blessing from John O’Donohue. After you read it, listen in below, as the author extends this wish for me, to you …

Beannacht, (Beannacht means Blessing in Gaelic)

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

Listen in, to hear my favorite blessing read by the author, the beautiful-hearted John O’Donohoue in his gorgeous Irish brogue.

Does Telling the Truth Matter?

When my son was 7 years old, my well-meaning friend offered to hook up an extra cable box he had … illegally.

I said absolutely not.

But my friend insisted that no one would ever know. I said I would know and what kind of lesson would that teach my son? He still didn’t get it, and persisted, “He would not know.”

Really?

Gosh knows I am not perfect. Gosh knows I’ve totally dropped-the-ball of my grander intention to be my ideal best self at times, but I learned something very important about myself in that exchange.

I don’t lie.

I don’t want to be known as a liar.

I don’t want anything to do with anything about lying.

Not only for the virtuous reason, that I didn’t want my son to ever think I would consciously and wittingly choose to do something unethical — I felt he’d smell the icky-ness of lying and the lack of character in the air!

But because lying felt too damn hard.

And flat-out wrong.

Like, what if you found out I hooked cable up illegally?

Would you think I lied to you about everything and anything that didn’t mean a damn thing anyway?

Would you think I was full of shit about everything I ever said and not value my ideas about what really mattered to me?

Would you think I was just ‘selling’ you health coaching as a fleeting and whimsical idea of the moment?

Or, would you know, would you trust by every thought, action, choice and decision I’ve ever made, that though not perfect, and though definitely a bumbling hot-mess in my budding days of business building, that what I offer is from a place of heart and experience that you fully trust?

For me, though very unwittingly, but very intuitively, I knew back when my friend asked me if I wanted a cable box installed for ‘free,’ that living in integrity is about living in wholeness.

How could I ever dare to promote myself as a legitimate voice about holistic health if my ideas were fragmented with half-truths, with lies, or worse, with only ‘selling’ as my end-goal?

There is one thing I know, and I was given the opportunity to remember this the other day by my insurance company, the thing that I learned in that conversation with my friend years back —

No matter how off-putting it may land, no matter how difficult being honest may feel in a moment, it’s very clear, there is freedom and personal power in truth telling …

And people love it. 

I’d love to hear your ideas about this post.

Have you ever felt confronted by something like this, when you knew your character was being called out?

I look forward to hearing from you in the comments box below.

Thank you in advance for sharing with me here.

The third step I recommend to look and feel 10 Years Younger is to reduce stress in your life, which seems paradoxical since stress is pretty much part and parcel to the demands of the modern lifestyle.

And though I dismissed my doctors ‘bold’ assertion that my poor health was correlated to stress years back, I’ve learned that stress no doubt links to poor health … and causes us to look older and beyond our years near overnight!

Today, 40-million Americans suffer from stress and stress-related symptoms, with side-effects including eating too much, lack of energy, lack of focus, trouble getting things done and even premature aging, poor self-esteem, heart disease and digestive problems.

But I discovered what Oprah Winfrey, Clint Eastwood, Jerry Seinfeld, Mick Jagger, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and scores of others have discovered to reduce stress and mediate health concerns:

Breath work and mindfulness.

Breath work and mindfulness reduce stress, they change the game in our pursuit to look and feel our very best selves from disconnected and stunted to connected and focused!

Michael Jordan said, “that Zen Buddhist stuff” really works!

It does!

But breath work and mindfulness are not solely associated with Buddhism, in large part from the efforts of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Initially, MBSR brought together meditation and yoga, but it has now evolved to an ideal complimentary form of medicine to address all sorts of health problems, not just stress, with looking and feeling your best self as the foremost result! 

Kabat-Zinn says about mediating, “there’s no real prescription but I would say it’s good to try 15 minutes:  long enough so that you get really bored and antsy and learn how to make room for unpleasant moments.”

The whole point with meditating, with doing breath work is to stay long enough for discomfort to rise, because as Zinn and other mediation teachers teach, our discomfort is our greatest teacher.

Creating relationship with what causes us discomfort consistently offers us the opportunity to notice how fleeting our thoughts are and to not take them personally. Thoughts come. Thoughts go and only hold the potency and meaning we give them.

What benefits do you think could be possible in your life if you could readily notice stressful thoughts and embrace them as not good or bad, but just as fleeting thoughts?

Who do you think you’d be without stressful thoughts in you life?

I remember when Buddhist meditation teacher and author of Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program, Sharon Salzberg taught me to greet each thought as a friend, a friend who simply came to visit to deliver a message … and to then just let it go.

Or how my Spiritual director and author of Your Truest Self, Janice Lynne Lundy taught me to remember when I am triggered by the actions and behaviors of someone to ‘mindfully’ remember they want to be happy, they want to succeed, they want to grow and learn, they want to love, they want to experience joy …  “just like me.” 

Too simplistic?

Total game-changers.

Both suggestions offer the opportunity to cut a gaping hole into even old, debilitating thought patterns so you can get on to looking and feeling, living and being your very best self!

One very simple breath exercise to reduce stress beyond Salzberg’s and Lundy’s suggestions is to breathe in love, breathe out fear, breathe in calm, breathe out frustration, breathe in gratefulness, breathe out surrender, as examples. But you fill in the blanks of what you most need,

I breathe in __________ .
I breathe out __________.

The second step I took to look and feel 10 years younger is change my diet.

Your body does not recognize much of what is in processed ‘foods,’ because nothing is recognizable any longer, hence the growing health problems and premature aging in this country. But equally problematic to that is, your body produces excess mucous to protect you from all these foreign substances you ingest in processed foods, which sets the stage for low to no absorption, inflammation, autoimmune disease, chronic disease and … premature aging.

How can you look and feel your best if your body is in constant struggle mode?

When a product is placed on a shelf without refrigeration there is zero live, vital, magnetically-charged nutrition left to fuel your cells. (Remember basic quantum physics, the behavior of matter?) There is no magnetic charge, no life force energy left in processed foods to fuel your body, that’s just science.

Live foods on the other hand, foods alive with vitamin, mineral, enzyme and phytonutrient electricity, nourish your cells and bring that very potent and active magnetic energy to each and every one! 

If you’re not ready to take on a whole diet transformation yet, let me offer you one near-miracle solution you can do every day to instantly revive your skin, bring back your glow and turn your body back on!

Green Juice.

Green juice is the ultimate “beauty secret weapon.”  Beyond any pricey luxury cream, green juice IS your go-to beauty booster! Why? Green juice can change your life … and pretty darn fast too! Green juice requires no digestive fire which is a perfect remedy for the oh-so-many who suffer from digestive problems today, so it delivers all that live and vital nutrition straight to your cells. Yup, think of green juice like an IV infusion of potent nutrition!

When I started drinking green juice I instantly felt more energy and instantly saw vibrancy return to my pale, dull, sick skin, which felt like straight-up miracles happening in my very prematurely aging, highly sensitive and symptomatic body!

Try it for yourself, and enjoy immediate affects like…

• More energy
• Less cravings and
• Less bloat

Plus, keep it up for a 7-10 days and you’ll notice…

• A spring in yours step
• A glow in your skin
• A lightness in Spirit, and even
• Weight loss

So, just to recap the steps I took on my 10 years younger journey:

1. I changed my thoughts and opened up to alternatives to Save My Sass Incorporated, SMSI
2. I changed my diet to fuel my cells with live foods

Both are solid game-changers!

But I’ve got one more to step to share with you next week, that without, you can kiss your 10 year younger hopes goodbye, au revorir, arrivederci, adios … ciao bella! 

Ready to find out Step #3? Click here to read the next post in this series.

A few weeks back I ran in to some one I worked with for several years, who literally stopped me on the street and said:

“Carol, what are you doing? You look younger than you did 10 years ago!”

And actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard something like this.

In fact, any time I run in to people from my past, they always comment on how I look, wondering what my secret is, which is so ironic when you juxtapose this to me sitting on my bed at one time horrified by how old and sick I looked in pictures I found … oh, so many years ago!

Over the course of the past 25 years, I put the study of health and healing, energy and vitality under a very investigative and rigorous, probing lens … and transformed me and my life in the process.

So what’s my secret to looking 20 years younger?

Botox? Restalyn? Laser-surgery?

Nope! Absolutely not.

It’s bonafide, straight-up healthy living.

Eating the right foods that regenerate every cell in my body, which naturally boost collagen and … vibrancy!

Taking care of myself so I can glow from the inside out.

Fresh, clean food to create fresh, clean cells, to create fresh, glowing skin!

So, I decided to write a series of posts to share with you my secrets and the 3 steps I took to look and feel 10 years younger.

The first step that I took, the first step that everything else I did built upon to get healthy was shifting my mindset.

And let me share with you a story on why shifting your mindset is so important. It shifted me and my whole mindset so I could look my very best, and I know it can shift you too!

I met a friend for breakfast.

She was raving about new lip-injections she’d just had done, but…

They. Were. Crooked.

Her lips were crooked.

Try as I might, I couldn’t stop looking at them, and … I couldn’t help but think to myself, what the heck did you do to your face?!

Do you too feel lured and tempted by the beauty industry’s immediate gratification quick-fixes?

I SO get it! I love beauty and beautiful things just like you …

But in that very decided moment, I swore that I would seek out approaches to beauty that delivered results, but that aligned with what was best for my body, what made sense!

And though risky procedures and injections of bacterias and foreign materials are so widespread and commonplace today, to fill out ‘this,’ or smooth out ‘that,’ they actually act against Nature and your body, rather than work with them! Your body is a fierce revitalizing machine capable of glowing and radiating health and natural beauty at any age, if cared for properly.

This actionable strategy will SHIFT your efforts from wanting to look and feel your very best to LOOKING and FEELING your very best forever.

When I was very sick,  I had established what I like to call Save. My. Sass. Incorporated.

SMSI was founded on shifting my mindset to what I call ‘good ‘ole common sense,’ to rely on the innate wisdom of Creation and my the healing force of my body, rather than marketing tactics of Cosmopolitan or Vogue Magazines. I set out to work with the force of Nature, not marketing strategies and risky quick-fixes funneled to us every waking moment.

What did that mean to me then, but more importantly, what does that mean for you now?

It meant that to establish Save My Sass Incorporated I first needed to deep-dive into what I thought was true about health and illness to find out what was limiting me from looking and feeling my very best.

As you can imagine, this was both an exciting and scary time, for when seeking answers … and finding them … to why I looked and felt so poorly, I kept coming up against resistance. What I was discovering about healing the human body did not align with what my friends and family believed to be true, so I experienced a measure of confrontation when defining what made sense to me. But it was easy to stay the course, because what I was discovering was working! I started to look and feel better!

I recommend that you first deep-dive into what you think about healing your body and illness, what you think about pills for this, or procedures for that and how it all effects your body long-term. Get clear on what makes sense to you, but do challenge what you’ve long held as true, in the spirit of an inquisitive student — “challenge the dominant paradigm!” This IS the foundation upon which you build looking and feeling 10 years younger for results that last.

I offer you 3 things to consider:

1. Your family and friends may not initially support you or understand your ideas to get really healthy. No worries. They will or they won’t. Do you.
2. Begin today. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Begin today with even one small commitment, one small new healthy daily habit. That one small healthy habit will compound over time into a dyed-in-the-wool way of being for you, I promise.
3. If you change your thoughts, if you shift your perspective to what resonates for you, not what necessarily resonates for your friends or your family, a whole new world of possibilities appears, and literally almost like *poof!*

But while I’ve discovered that directing my thoughts to what resonates most for me to be quintessential to healing my body and looking better than I did 20 years ago, alone it is not enough!

There are 2 more shifts I made on my 10 years younger journey. Click here to read about Step #2.