Posted on

Day 5: Smile…it’s healthy AND free!

“Smile, it is the key that fits the lock of everyone’s heart”― Anthony J. D’Angelo

Is it me or does it seem like everyone is living in their own little bubble? We have all these fancy devices that allow us to be connected to, well,  EVERYTHING. But the reality is this overwhelming virtual connection allows us to pull away from the human to human connection we all need. As a result people are feeling more disconnected than ever.  Check out this recent article on the rise of suicide rates in the U.S.  (While it doesn’t name this disconnection as a cause for the spike, I can’t help but think it plays a part, especially for people who don’t have a diagnosed mental illness).

A great way to create connection and boost our (and others) health is a simple SMILE.   How can smiling benefit our health you ask? There are lots of ways!! Here are just a few:

  • Releases endorphins. These can help reduce stress AND boost our moods.
  • Creates empathy. We unconsciously smile when we feel embarrassed, which is an ice breaker and creates empathy from those around us.
  • Pain reducer.  Smiling, especially in conjunction with laughter, can reduce pain.
  • Confidence.  People who smile are judged to be more confident than those who don’t. (Remember this at your next job interview).
  • Look younger. {YESSSSSSSS!!} Smiling naturally lifts your face and makes you appear younger. {Take that laugh lines!}

Number one reason to smile: It’s CONTAGIOUS!!  Half of people will smile back when you do.  This can create a ripple effect through the rest of their day (and yours).  And so on, and so on. Think about it…your one smile can change the world.  Get to it!!  {Cheeeeeeeese!}

Light and Love,

♥k

Posted on

Day 4: REDUCE and REUSE, then Recycle

“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” – Robert Swan 

I’ll admit this health habit has more of a trickle down effect on our health than a direct effect,  but it’s still super important.  (That said, eliminating single use and even recycle-able plastic from the things we eat and drink is definitely a direct health benefit). We have to start thinking larger than ourselves if we want to leave future generations any kind of planet that is safe to inhabit.

Recycling is great.  We love recycling!  All those blue bins filled with things that aren’t going to the landfill.  {Go us!!}  We feel like we are really doing something good for the environment.  And we are…but not as good as we could be.  Most of us forget about the other two concepts in the Reduce/Reuse/Recycle campaign. It’s not just that it flows off the tongue better to say it that way.  The principle of good/better/best is in play…in reverse, since the EPA started with reduce (the best) first.  We have focused mainly on recycling (the good) because it’s more convenient to throw something in the bin, pull it to the curb, give ourselves a pat on the back and never thinking of it again.

In case you didn’t know, China has put stricter regulations on what they will accept from foreign countries.  They have basically stopped accepting buying our recyclables, especially if they consider the items contaminated. {Hello, greasy pizza box}.  We have become Aspirational Recyclers.  We put something in the bin we hope can be recycled, then when it can’t be and has potentially contaminated everything it’s been in contact with, it all becomes trash.  (For a list of things you may be incorrectly recycling click here.  Sadly, I know I’m guilty of several of these).

So what’s an environmentally conscious person to do?  Easy. Start looking at ways you are using convenience items at the expense of the environment. Here are some ideas to start:

First step, REDUCE:

  • Stop buying single use items like disposable plates, water bottles, ziploc® baggies, etc.
  • Don’t upgrade your phone just because your contract says you can or a new phone is released.
  • Cancel unnecessary mail.
  • Don’t take extra napkins, condiments or straws when you don’t need them (always make sure when you place a to-go or delivery order you tell them “just the food, please” so they don’t give you any of these extras.
  • Be mindful of what you’re bringing into your home and  remember that at some point these items will have to be disposed of.
  • Change your Amazon Prime shipping options to the “delivery in fewest possible packages”.  This option isn’t always two days, but it will take less resources and packaging.

Next, REUSE:

  • Bring your own shopping bags when you shop.
  • If you forget them {I’m guilty of this} and need to use the store’s bags make sure to recycle them in the store (most stores have the boxes to recycle at the front by the carts) next time OR use them in other ways…we like to use them on our dog walks for doody bags.
  • Reusable water bottles.  If you do anything please, please stop using single use water bottles.  These, while admittedly super convenient, are massively polluting the environment.  Read more here if you need some motivation.
  • Reusable coffee/tea mugs.  Tip: Starbucks will fill your personal mug for you. (They just can’t touch your lid).  They will also give you 10 cents off your purchase for doing this. {score!}
  • When you need to purchase something check your local Facebook groups, Craigslist, Freecycle or thrift stores to see if someone is trying to find a home for theirs.

Finally, RECYCLE (responsibly).

There are tons of creative ways to save plastic, paper  and other unnecessary from our landfills and recycle centers.  It takes a little pre-planning on our part, but I promise in the long run it will be worth it.  As Annie Leonard reminds us,  “There is no such thing as away. When you throw something away, it must go somewhere.” Truth.

Light and Love,

♥k

 

Posted on

Day 3: Get some!! {Zzzzzzz’s that is}

Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. – Thomas Dekker

Oh sweet sleep, how sorry I am that I never appreciated how special you are.  Please accept my sincerest apologies for being so ungrateful.  {“Don’t Know What You Got Till It’s Gone” by Cinderella (the band, not the princess) keeps playing in my head.} In case you have no idea who I’m talking about, or you do and just want an earworm from the late ’80s, this is for you! Enjoy.

Sleep is INCREDIBLY important.  It ranks right up there with exercise and eating well in the healthy habits department.  However, it also ranks up there with things most of us suck at. (Hence, Day 3).  Not only are we sleeping less, our quality of sleep is going down, down, down.  So we need to figure out two things here: how we are going to get more sleep and how we are going to get better sleep.

Let’s address the more first…since most of us are good at simple math, we will do the easiest first.  The National Sleep Foundation says adults need between 7 and 9 hours each night.  So the first thing to do is look at what time you need to get up, then subtract 7,8 or 9 hours (whichever you think would best serve you) from that.  Easy, right?!  I’ll give you my example: I get up at 6am during the summer months and I’d like to get at least 8 hours of sleep so counting back 8 hours from 6am means I need to be asleep (not just in bed, but actually asleep) by 10pm.  Take some time (pun intended) to figure out what time you need to be going to sleep.

The second step is a little more involved.  How do we get more quality out of our sleep sessions? A little forward thinking (and a little habit changing) should do the trick.  First, about an hour before your calculated sleep time, you need to start preparing yourself for sleep.  There are several things you can do to trigger your body that it’s time.  Highest priority should be getting off the computer, the phone, the iPad…basically any electronic device needs to go to nite-nite an hour before you do. (I know, I know. I can hear your collective {gasp} Sorry!) Studies have shown the lights from these devices interfere with our natural circadian rhythm.  Ideally, you should keep these devices out of your bedroom at night.  (Preview: we will focus on this habit on another day).

Other suggestions for adding quality to your sleep sesh:

  • No caffeine after 2 pm.
  • Exercise daily, but not within 4 hours of your sleep time.
  • Stick to the same sleep schedule every day, even on weekends.
  • Don’t go to sleep hungry (or stuffed).
  • Limit late afternoon naps (I no longer remember naps {tears}).
  • No alcohol within 3 hours of going to sleep. (Again, I hear your {gasp}).
  • Keep your room cool AND dark.
  • I personally like to diffuse calming essential oils an hour before sleep.

This is important stuff. The majority of people are chronically sleep deprived and aren’t paying attention to how this affects their overall health.  Take today (and the rest of this month) and get your sleep back on track!  Oh, and don’t forget to make that bed when you wake up. {wink, wink}

Light and Love,

♥ k

***Disclaimer: this post was late today because I couldn’t finish it before my sleep time last night, so I had to finish it this morning. Trying to take my own advice over here!***

Posted on

Day 2: Your mom was right…Make Your Bed!

“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.”-Navy Seal Admiral William H. McCraven

 

It so simple you might be thinking Really?! Making my bed? That’s high enough on the priority list to make Day 2?! Yes!! Absolutely.  For two reasons.  First: it’s easy and requires very little effort (#win).  You basically just have to stand up, turn around and rearrange some covers and pillows.  It takes mere minutes and you can still be half asleep. Easy peasy lemon squeezy as my five year old (who makes her bed every most days) likes to say.  The fact that it’s so easy leads to {the more important} reason number two: one small seemingly insignificant act creates a ripple effect throughout your entire day.  Every time you walk into your bedroom you will see two things: an accomplished task AND a tidy bed.  (I think of it like I do the kitchen sink. If there are no dishes in the sink then the kitchen feels clean). That neatly made bed may just encourage you to pick up the laundry on the floor or carry the hamper to the laundry room. Or {gasp} put that pile of clean laundry away!  It may even ripple out to other rooms in your house.  Yes please!!

The cue is easy for this habit.  All you have to do is wake up!  Then create the routine of pulling the covers up and straighten the bed before doing anything else. (Ideally you should be the last person out of the bed to keep everyone happy). The reward for this habit is the best!  Nothing feels better than getting into a well made bed at night. So if you do it first thing in the morning you’ve eliminated another thing you DON’T want to do at the end of the day when you’re tired and just want to go to bed.  You’re welcome!

Don’t forget to continue drinking water today!!

Light and Love,

♥ k

Posted on

DAY 1: Drink! Drink! Drink!

“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” – John C. Maxwell

Welcome to DAY 1 of the Healthy Habits Overhaul!  I’m so glad you’re here.  For the next 31 days I will be sharing a daily challenge that I’m hoping you (as well as myself) will turn into a habit.  We will either be adding something brand new, upgrading an existing habit or deleting something that is no longer serving our highest health.  My hope is that you will try each challenge for at least the day it’s posted. (Or swap with another day that week, if the timing of it is off for you).  Ideally, I’d like for you to continue each challenge through the rest of the month, so that at the end of these 31 days you will have compiled an arsenal of healthy habits and be ready to take control of your health.

It should come as no surprise that the first challenge is WATER!! Water is life.  We can’t live without it.  We know this, but a lot of us (ahem, looking at myself here) don’t drink nearly enough of it.  In the spirit of transparency, this has always been one of my biggest obstacles in the past… another reason it’s #1 on the list.  A year ago, most days, the only water I got was what I made my coffee with .  I basically drank coffee until it was time to switch to wine with maybe a LaCroix thrown in there somewhere so I could tell myself I’d had some water.  I’m sure (ahem,  hoping)that a lot of you can relate.  But we are going to change that in the next 31 days!! Yessssss!

I could list a ton of benefits of drinking water, but no one needs convincing. (But in case you do, this is for you).  We all know it’s good for our skin, that it flushes toxins out of our body AND helps with hangovers. I will say that I never knew being well hydrated could boost your immune system.  I mean it makes total sense, but it was never something I considered when my doctor asked me how much water I drank. Speaking of how much, lets all take a minute to figure out how much water we individually need each day. Most experts say about half your body weight in ounces is ideal, but this really depends on your activity level and how much water you’re getting from your food.  I weigh {somewhere around} 150 pounds, half of that is 75.  So I aim for 75 ounces each day, more when I’m outside a lot and/or exercising. Figure out a good goal for you and go with it.  (You could always go with good ole standby of 8 glasses/day, which equals 64 ounces).

Now, if  you read my post from yesterday (Anatomy of a Habit) you know that we need to create a cue or a trigger to help this habit take root.   Think about what might help trigger you to drink something.  For me, a cute water bottle is key!  I have a 25 ounce stainless steel bottle that I love. Not only is it pretty, but I know if I fill it up three times I’ve met my 75 ounce goal for the day.  {Score}  Another cue that I use is keeping a 16 ounce water bottle by my bed at night.  Before I eat or drink anything in the morning, I make sure I have emptied this water bottle. We’ve gone at least 7 and maybe up to 10 hours (if you’re a lucky duck) without drinking anything, so as soon as you pee, its essential to start hydrating!! Another tip:  I know several people who drink 16 ounces of water before they eat any snacks or meals.  I think this is a great idea because sometimes we think we’re hungry when really we are dehydrated.  Doing this can also keep us from overeating because we’ve put something in our tummies before we start munching! Yay!

So cheers *clinking my water bottle to yours* to water and all it’s wonderful benefits!  I know in 31 days you’re gonna thank me!

Light and Love,

♥ k

 

Posted on

Anatomy of a Habit

“We are what we repeatedly do.” – Aristotle

We are creatures of habit.  Our daily habits are directed by our beliefs: we are what we think and what we do. Daily. A large part of what we do every day isn’t as a result of a conscious decision. It’s a habit. 40 percent, in fact. (Our brains likes this because it makes the job of being the brain sooo much easier).  Where you are in life today is largely a result of actions you don’t even think about anymore.  Let that sink in a minute…

Now, the good news is we CAN take control of our life by changing our habits.  Depending on who you ask, a habit can take anywhere from 21-66 days to take root in the brain. So we’ve got three weeks to three months to make it a no-brainer (pun intended, of course).

A group of researchers at MIT discovered the process which is the basis for every habit’s formation. If we are going to change our habits, we have to understand how they get created.  Every habit is formed by a three step process:

1. Cue.  The trigger that tells your brain which habit to use.

2. Routine. The behavior (or emotion) that gets triggered.

3. Reward.  How the brain decides if the process is worth it.

An example:  You get finally get the kids to bed *sigh* and want to release the day’s stress (cue).  You grab bottle of wine (routine).  You feel calm and relaxed (reward).

The cue and the reward are the big pushers in this process.  So if we want to change the routine we are going to make sure the new habit gives our brain the same reward feeling. Otherwise, the brain will see it as too hard and instead reinforce the old habit we are wanting to change.  NOT what we want. If the reward is to feel calm and relaxed, we’ve got to think of something else that can give us that feeling when we are stressed at the end of our day.  Maybe we can exchange the bottle of wine for reading a book (something fiction, please) or watching something on Netflix.  Over time, our brains will start to replace the routine of grabbing that bottle of wine with grabbing the latest must-have novel.  This is what I like to call an UPGRADE to an existing habit.

The same concept works when we are trying to ADD a habit “from scratch”. We’ve got to figure out the cue, routine and reward for the habit in order to make sure it cements in our brains.  Willpower is needed to DELETE a habit. It might be the hardest of all in the Add-Delete-Upgrade scenario, but it is possible  Willpower is a muscle, not a skill.  The more we exercise our willpower the easier it becomes to use it (just like our actual muscles, willpower gets stronger).

Like I said at the beginning of this (looooong) post, our beliefs direct our habits.  We first need to believe we can make the changes we want, then we will create action, which results in making the changes a reality!

If you want to know more about habits, check out the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

I’m so looking forward to starting the 31 day Healthy Habit Overhaul tomorrow!! I’ll be posting over on Instagram every day with the daily habit as well as how I’m making it happen in my own life  See ya there!

Light and Love,

♥k

Posted on

The Day My World Turned Upside Down

I came up with the name for this blog about two years ago.  I had no idea what I was doing (literally, I’m completely clueless with internet/technology stuff).  More importantly, I  was unsure of what my focus should be…trials of motherhood, minimalist/de-cluttered lifestyle, nutrition, home renovation projects??  I’m fairly knowledgeable and interested in all of these things, but still, I just didn’t know.  Nothing felt like the perfect fit. Nothing screamed “this is YOUR purpose“.   I was drawn to the idea of an upside down umbrella, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why.

Fast forward almost two years (and one half-assed blog post, haha) and I suddenly find myself in the blind-sided moment for which I had unknowingly created this platform. Three months ago IT happened. The phone call. The dreaded words. “You have papillary carcinoma.”   I didn’t know it at the time, but doctors don’t like to say the word cancer…definitely not as much as patients hate hearing it, but still, every doctor I have seen since that date has avoided saying the C word.   It was three  days after that first phone call before anyone said it to my face and it wasn’t my doctor, but one of his staff.  She said it so nonchalantly, yet matter of fact, I almost burst into tears on the spot.

Everything after being told you have cancer feels, well, upside down…it feels wrong, it feels overwhelming, it feels surreal, it feels like there is no air and too much air all at the same time. It’s a life changing moment that you can never turn back from.  (No matter how freaking badly you want to).  It has taken me three months to go through all the stages of grief associated with such a diagnosis and now here I am, ready to do battle and ready to share my journey in hopes that I can help others who, just like me, have become an upside down umbrella.

 

Light and Love,

K

Posted on

Thresholds

I had an “a-ha” moment the other day, when thinking about this journey I’ve been on for more than three years. We all have a threshold when it comes to our possessions.  Thresholds exist for most things…we have a threshold for pain, a patience threshold (one I’m constantly working on), a threshold for the number of shows our DVR will hold. My DVR’s threshold is extremely high and yet I still find myself having to go and pick through which of my kids 100+ shows I can delete to make room for what I want to watch. (More on this in another post). I had just never really thought about there being a tipping point when it comes to my possessions.

The problem is we think our possessions threshold is in direct correlation to the size of the spaces we live in and this is where we go wrong.  Terribly, overwhelmingly wrong.  See, as your house fills up with belongings you think, ugh, we need a bigger house.  And so you go about looking for a bigger house, usually buying the one with the most square footage (or most storage) within your budget.  The problem is you move all of your possessions into this new house without getting rid of all the things you don’t really need. This house has a ton of storage, you think you will never fill it up…But you do. Two years later you are overwhelmed (again) with the amount of STUFF you have accumulated, on top of the 15 (or so) boxes sitting in your garage/basement/storage room that you never got around to unpacking when you moved in.  Only now, you have also reached your mortgage threshold (see, they’re everywhere) and there is no way you can move to another, even bigger house.  And so you feel overwhelmed, and tired and just weighed down by all. this. stuff.

Now, having more space means you CAN have more things,  but it doesn’t mean you should.  At the end of the day, you are one person. One person with a threshold of what you can accomplish in a day.  You can only pick up so much, work so much, clean so much and even think about so much in a day. This is why our homes (and our heads) feel so overwhelmed.  We have met and greatly exceeded our thresholds.

So, how do you begin reducing your stuff? Pick a space in your house, a closet, a cabinet or even a drawer (the JUNK drawer is a good place to start). Open it, look at it’s contents.  Has this space exceeded it’s threshold? Go through and eliminate what you can from it.  Trash the trash, put the things that don’t belong there where they should go.  If you have multiples of the same item, keep the one you actually use and donate the rest.  You’ll know this space is within it’s threshold when you can look at it and no longer feel the overwhelming weight of too much. Then…move on to the next space!

Light and Love,

Kendra