Word-Of-the-Week #612: Laughter
April 28, 2016 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #612: Laughter
Laughter – the sound of happiness and amusement.
When was the last time you had a good belly laugh? How about a nice piece of dark chocolate? Can you believe that when combined they could help you have a healthier and happier life? Seriously!
This week’s SDUT featured an article by Michele Parente titled, “LAUGHTER, CHOCOLATE: A HEALTHY COMBO. Father, son team up for UCSD lecture to unwrap mysteries of two happy habits.” She writes, “Here’s something that’s sure to put a smile on your face: A key to good health just might come in the form of a chocolate chuckle.
Scientific studies have long given credence to the adage that laughter is the best medicine. Now, an increasing body of research is showing the positive health benefits of dark chocolate.
Dr. Lee Berk, director of Loma Linda University’s Clinical Molecular and Psychoneuro-immunology Research Laboratory, says his research has shown that mirthful laughter can affect the brain by producing gamma waves to levels similar to when a person meditates. Stress, the opposite of genuine, physiology-changing laughter, suppresses the immune system, speeds up the heart rate and produces detrimental stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline.
Laughter spurs positive emotions with beneficial results on the immune system, heart rate and brain. Busting a gut watching “Bridesmaids” for the 10th time could significantly reduce the output of detrimental stress hormones, and gamma wave brain frequency is changed, allowing for cleared, more focused thought.
Dark chocolate made from 70 percent cacao does the same thing!”
Dr. Berk goes on to say, “Clearly, lifestyle components, whether behavior or what we ingest, have a commonality in making us healthier. My perception was, if behavior can modulate brain frequency, why doesn’t food or the kinds of food you eat do the same thing? Home run.
Dark chocolate with high cacao content has long been believed to be a good source of flavonoids, with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant elements that promote cardiovascular health. In addition, the flavonoids in chocolate are shown to affect intellect, enhance memory and recall, and the brain’s ability to reason.
Moreover it’s known to spur the “love or bliss hormone.” Eating healthy chocolate enhances serotonin, stimulates good endorphins and makes you feel better.”
This week’s focus is on the sound of happiness and amusement coming from you. And guilt free chocolate eating! But remember it has to be dark with high cacao content. I like mine with almonds. How about you? Here’s to mirthful laughter and bliss with a big bite of dark chocolate!
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Word-Of-the-Week #611: Self-compassion
April 21, 2016 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #611: Self-compassion
Self-compassion – extending compassion to one’s self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering.
How well do you handle failure? Do you tend to be over critical of a shortcoming? How would you rate your overall satisfaction with your life?
This week’s WOW comes from long time friend, subscriber, and sister Lurene. She wrote, “I also like self-compassion” in response to last week’s self-respect. When I asked her what that meant to her she said, “That I finally know, that I am enough – more than enough, for everyone in my life including myself.”
So with a little research I found Kristin Neff, Ph.D. who is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on self-compassion, being the first one to operationally define and measure the construct over a decade ago.
“She has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main components – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
- Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism.
- Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience.
- Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one’s negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. Conversely, mindfulness requires that one not be “over-identified” with mental or emotional phenomena, so that one suffers aversive reactions. This latter type of response involves narrowly focusing and ruminating on one’s negative emotions.
Research indicates that self-compassionate individuals experience greater psychological health than those who lack self-compassion. For example, self-compassion is positively associated with life-satisfaction, wisdom, happiness, optimism, curiosity, learning goals, social connectedness, personal responsibility, and emotional resilience. At the same time, it is negatively associated with self-criticism, depression, anxiety, rumination, thought suppression, perfectionism, and disordered eating attitudes.
Although psychologists extolled the benefits of self-esteem for many years, recent research has exposed costs associated with the pursuit of high self-esteem, including narcissism, distorted self-perceptions, contingent and/or unstable self-worth, as well as anger and violence toward those who threaten the ego.
It appears that self-compassion offers the same mental health benefits as self-esteem, but with fewer of its drawbacks such as narcissism, ego-defensive anger, inaccurate self-perceptions, self-worth contingency, or social comparison.”
This week’s focus is on self-compassion. Are you as kind to yourself as you are to others? Do you feel that you have more problems than others? Do you try to suppress negative emotions? Are you enough – for everyone in your life including yourself?
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FUN-travel: Slow Boat to Singapore Trip Recap
April 15, 2016 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on FUN-travel: Slow Boat to Singapore Trip Recap
Travel is Very Personal! – This was our 22nd cruise and by far the longest ever! The Full Monte – Crystal’s world cruise – was 103 days and we were so-o-o glad we opted to just do half of it. For us it was too much “vanilla” (the same flavor) and we like more land touring mixed in.
- 22 of the 46 days were spent at sea and we covered a total of 12,881 nautical miles. We turned our clocks back a total of 6 times. When we left San Francisco the temp was 56 and when we hit New Caledonia it was 86. We crossed the equator in both directions. And amazingly, out of the 20 ports we visited, we had only been to Sydney together.
So how did Crystal rate?
- Food & Beverage – consistently the best food, the best cappuccino (only at the
Bistro with the “real espresso” machine – only problem is they don’t open until 9 am), complementary wines were fairly decent with a good selection. There were plenty of diet options with many “themed” lunches at the Lido buffet. And there was always an ample supply of jumbo shrimp, specialty cheeses, and awesome Angus burgers cooked to order.
- Staterooms – their basic stateroom is 269 sq ft including the balcony, with only 226 sq ft of room space. Too small for us for that long! The bathroom included double sinks and a bathtub/shower. The standard straight line, no walk in closet, left much to be desired! While there were ample hangars and space for a lengthy cruise, the logistics made it impossible for two people to get dressed at the same time.
- The Veranda – having one is great (and everyone wants one) but what’s the point when it’s hot, humid or raining. (We always book the cheapest room and are very grateful every time we get upgraded)
- Excursions – the few we paid for were “hurry up and wait” and way over priced!
- Entertainment – passengers rave about the variety of the shows. We went to maybe a third of them and we would rate a couple of them as excellent. But then they started getting repeated when a new segment started. That was a huge turn off for us!
Barista by Day, Sommelier by Night – Adrian’s wide Cheshire Cat grin greeted us almost every morning and those few times we “got” to dine in the specialty restaurant Prego at no charge. And he was totally on top of his game! We ordered the same thing every morning. To make it as efficient as possible (and so we got it quicker) we used sign language. All we had to do was walk in, make eye contact, and hold up 2 fingers. That meant we both wanted our usual. Now for refills, whoever held up 1 finger got theirs. He was the best!
Awesome Afzal – my favorite Bartender – despite having prematurely thinning hair, it didn’t detract from his chiseled and dashingly good Indian looks. And when the bar filled to capacity he never broke a sweat. Shake, stir, blend, and pour. All night long he plied his craft with precise execution. After 10 years of working in cruise ships bars he said, “I have seen pretty much every bizarre thing you can think of.”
- Pretty Lucky – as we managed to avoid Cyclone Winston, which totally devastated Fiji and turned out to be the most powerful storm on record in the Southern Hemisphere. Then tsunami warnings were issued when a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck in the Indian Ocean off Sumatra. Finally, as we cruised through the Straits of Malacca we found out that it’s notorious for Somali pirates and where Captain Phillips’ ship was hijacked!
Getting to the Temple on Time!
Word-Of-the-Week #610: Self-respect
April 14, 2016 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #610: Self-respect
Self-respect – a confidence in one’s own self worth and a concern to maintain it.
Do you have confidence in your own self-worth? Are you comfortable receiving love and respect from others? Do you know that every decision you make in life stems from your level of self-respect?
This week’s WOW comes from long time friend and subscriber Joe. This was his response to last week’s Hubris. “It is hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way. I think that was a country song, by either Kenny Rogers or Mac Davis. I can’t remember. But it describes the hubristic personality perfectly.
Many athletes fit this description. And certainly Donald Trump is top of mind of those who are hubristic.
I am humble enough in who I am as a person and professional not to take credit
for something I did not accomplish. I will always give credit where credit is due. I am repulsed by those who talk about themselves in the third person and continue to brag on what they did or did not do. Nobody with any self-respect wants to be around those people.
Self-respect is probably the key word here. There is not enough of it in the world today.”
And I found this great excerpt written by Candace Plattor M.A., “Self-respect is that deeper, inner feeling we have about ourselves. In the same way that self-esteem is earned, by proving to ourselves that we can achieve positive results in our various life tasks, self-respect is also earned — it’s an ‘inside job’ that nobody can do for us. Self-respect is not something we can buy in the 7-11, nor can another person bestow it upon us. In fact, when other people respect us but we don’t respect ourselves, it’s very difficult to let that positive attention in. It’s not until we truly love and respect ourselves, that we can begin to believe that we are worthy of another person’s love and respect.
The only way to have self-respect is to earn it — by continuing to do the next right thing. Self-respect is perhaps the most important thing we either have or don’t have, because it forms the keystone of how we treat ourselves and how we allow others to treat us. I believe that every decision we make in life — without exception — stems from our level of self-respect, and nothing is more important than that.”
She says to ask yourself this question, “What do I need to do, and what do I need to NOT do, to be able to really look honestly at myself and be okay with who I see?”
This week’s focus is self-respect. How well do you treat yourself? Do you have a sense of your own self -worth? Are your okay with the person you’ve become? Do you still need to earn more self-respect?
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FUN-travel: Malacca, Malaysia – Day 49
April 11, 2016 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on FUN-travel: Malacca, Malaysia – Day 49
Monday, March 14th
- By night – Yonkers Street in China Town is pedestrian only and filled with “hawker” stalls and wall-to-wall people!
- By day – it’s much more civilized as you can actually walk on the sidewalk and get a peek inside the stores.
- Peanut Pedi Cab – knows no boundaries! There was no begging here, just the locals trying really hard to get the tourists to hand over some of that money.
FUN-food – Hard to believe I know…but the AC and the really good noodles beckoned us…so it was back to the Hard Rock for lunch again! Our waiter Zuqi greeted us with his crooked, sweet smile when he spotted us coming through the front door.
- All Dolled Up – and the Cycle Rickshaws Rocked! Totally adorned with music blasting, this
Frozen theme with flowers and fringe was quite fancy. And at night they are all lit up with strobe light ropes pulsing to the beat.
- We chose to visit this city on a recommendation from a friend who grew up in Singapore. Since I was in Singapore 25 years ago I knew that four days in Singapore would have been too many for Chris. In hindsight had we known how long it was going to take for the immigration stops required for both countries (45 minutes) outbound and (over an hour) inbound we probably wouldn’t have gone. Over 5 hours each way!
- Majestic Malacca Sultanate Watermill – on the bank of the Malacca River opposite the Casa del Rio Melaka in the old town.
FUN-fact – The city is named after the Malacca sultanate that ruled over the archipelago between 1400 and 1511.
