Countdown Reason # 13: The American Stress Crisis
A new study released today by the American Psychological Association found, after studying 2000 Americans, that the day-to-day stress the average American is living with surpasses healthy stress levels. Americans say their daily stress is at a 3.6 on a 10-point scale. Just think of that for a minute in terms of the physical “pain
Countdown Reason # 14: The Autoimmune Epidemic Was Just the First Half of the Journey
THE LAST BEST CURE will be in stores, on Amazon, Indiebound, and everywhere else in two weeks. I can hardly believe it. Many of you are fans of The Autoimmune Epidemic (now in its 5th printing!). Which, as you know, talks about all the environmental stressors and toxins we encounter in our lives that add
Countdown Reason # 15: YES, True
I don’t know why I thought of this today. Maybe because as I walked past my son’s room this morning it hit me, ping (really, I guess the word is pang), how empty his room will be when he leaves for college. Standing there, with my hand on the door, I had a sudden flashback.
Countdown Reason # 16: And Gratitude Helps with Pain
I have a good friend, a dear, dear friend, really, who I’ll call “K.” “K” suffers from an autoimmune disease. In the past five years she’s gone from daily injections of a multiple sclerosis drug that packs difficult side effects to taking no meds at all. She carries the most grateful, compassionate outlook of anyone
Countdown Reason # 17: Grateful at Home
A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology evaluated the relationship between how much partners felt appreciated, and how likely a marriage was to last over the years. They found that appreciation and gratitude between two people spirals up or down; the more a partner shows gratitude, the more their partner shows
Countdown Reason # 18: Bless
Recently, Stanford researchers put folks into two groups. One group went through a 9-week compassion course, the other didn’t. Afterwards participants who had taken the course were not only found to be more compassionate to others — they had more compassion for themselves. They liked themselves better by learning to be more compassionate to those
Countdown Reason # 19: Why Emotional Memories of Joy Matter so Much
We’ve learned so much in the course of our lives. Math problems, how to punctuate a sentence, set the table, use an iPhone, hit the right buttons on our blog dashboard or twitter (okay, the latter three are still not so easy for some of us!). But can you remember exactly when you learned how
Countdown Reason # 20: The Empathy Thing
If you’ve read all my posts you know that I sometimes write about the amazing women who talk to me at my lectures, or who email me their stories about wanting to wrap in more joy in the face of life’s hurdles. And how I thought of them so much as I test drove all
Countdown Reason # 22: This is Hard Work, And We Need Help Along the Way
I am sitting here in an odd position. I am in bed with the flu, but the stomach flu can also mean all sorts of very un-fun things for me with my autoimmune condition. If you know my work you know exactly what I’m talking about. So I am trying really hard to do something
Countdown Reason # 36: The Last Best Cure — it’s in my Hands!
There is a big moment in every author’s life, and it happens only once, with each book we publish. Today my friendly UPS guy knocked on the front door and smiled as he handed me a package. I peered at the return label and saw my publisher’s address: 375 Hudson Street, Hudson Street Press. I