Aging Wisdom from our dog Riley, ‘Thought Work’ and Intermittent Fasting

Insights from Jennifer

I just realized I could change the default font and spacing for my newsletters. My Gen X old lady eyes appreciate the upgrade, I hope you do too . I can’t believe we Gen Xers are one of the older generations now, 44-59 according to Google, solidly middle aged and approaching 60.

Eeek! Where does the time go?? One of the many reasons I am committed to be as healthy as possible as I age. It happens so quickly and happens to the best of us. A slightly macabre saying I occasionally throw around… “ain’t none of us getting out of this thing alive.” I will do everything in my power to stay healthy and active until it’s time for my exit.

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I see a great psychic medium here in Charlotte. She was connecting with our boxer lab mix Riley who passed at 15 last year and was with us for 14 years. Here is a picture of sweet Riley in his old man Mr. Gray Face years. I just LOVE elderly dogs and plan to adopt older dogs in the future.

We had to make the decision to euthanize after intense grand mal seizures and I wanted to know from Riley if we made the right decision. My psychic said Riley described his life with us as “Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Go to sleep.” I was sharing that with a friend recently and we both thought… that is the way to go! Great wisdom from our sweet boy Riley.

This Week’s Shot of MINDSET

I give monthly wellness workshops for a small engineering company based in Hawaii This month’s workshop was all about managing stress, coping, grounding, and relaxation. One of the ideas was to use journaling as a healthy coping mechanism to process emotions and manage stress. Journaling has all of these awesome health benefits:

Stress Reduction
Improved Mental Health
Improved Immune System
Improved Memory
Goal Achievement
Improved Critical Thinking
Creativity

Some of the employees asked about how to get started with journaling as I mentioned that I journal almost every morning. I gave some standard ideas about free form, get it all out, stream of consciousness journaling to process & release tough emotions. (I will share in a future newsletter a specific technique to use this type of journaling to eliminate pain in the body.)

Journaling is great either using a blank document on your phone or laptop or actual pen and paper. I have done both but really prefer writing by hand in journals lately.

”Using pen and paper forces you to slow down and think about what you’re writing. It helps you learn and remember better. Your brain operates differently when writing by hand compared to typing, sparking more creativity that might otherwise be dulled.” – Sam Matla

I also find when writing by hand that I tune in to my intuition more easily and ideas and messages flow in to help me process things or have new ideas for solving problems.

Related to mindset work, a type of journaling I have been doing lately and didn’t have time to share in that workshop is what I call THOUGHT WORK. I got this idea from a health coach on YouTube, Pahla B. I love her fun workouts for middle aged women in menopause – Oh Lort, is that my demographic now?!? See above about aging…

The Thought Work she encourages is pretty simple and helps me see that my brain comes up with all sorts of thoughts and it is up to me to decide if those thoughts are helpful and I want to incorporate them into my life or UNHELPFUL (our brains come up with thousands of unhelpful fear-based thoughts every day). I can then choose to let the unhelpful thoughts go.

Here is my Thought Work journaling process:

Write a question at the top of the page, something you are trying to solve or improve in your life or an area where you know you may have a lot of negative thoughts lurking. Always start the question with “What do I think about…?” This forces your brain to spill the beans on what it is thinking about this topic.
Tune in and write down all of the thoughts your brain is coming up with on that topic. Always start those sentences with “I think…” Write down the first 3-5 thoughts that come to mind. Leave space below each thought to write more info.
Go back to each thought on your list and tune in to how that thought makes you feel. Write down the feelings below that thought. e.g. stressed, angry, contracted or grounded, happy, optimistic
Based on the feelings that come up, label that thought HELPFUL or UNHELPFUL. I write it just like that in big all caps below the thought. You can even put a big X by the thoughts that are unhelpful, make you feel crappy, and contract your energy.

This step helps me see when my brain is just going into scared fight or flight mode and trying to ‘protect’ me. I can see the negative thoughts it wants to spew at me and I just say “thank you brain, but this thought is UNHELPFUL and I am going to let it go.”

BONUS Step #5: I then look back at the question, all of my brain’s thoughts, how they make me feel, and see if there is anything I need to balance at the subconscious level using PSYCH-K®. I do some balancing to strengthen my subconscious beliefs about the topic, allowing me to choose and reinforce HELPFUL beliefs that support where I want to go with my life.

This Week’s Shot of HEALTH

I love to share about Intermittent Fasting and all of the health benefits it brings. I have found in my own life that doing a lot of fasting is the quickest and best way to get to and stay at a trim, healthy low BMI weight now that I am 52 and in menopause.

I love it so much that I wrote an entire guide on how to get started and how to combine it with what I have found to be the healthiest diet for reaching all of my health goals. Not just me personally, thousands of scientific studies, books, and a growing number of doctors, health professionals, and organizations are starting to back moving to a more whole foods plant based diet.

Here is a little excerpt from the guide that shows anything from quitting snacks between meals and letting your body rest for a few hours, to just getting outta the kitchen after dinner and fasting overnight from say 7pm to 7am, to letting your body rest & repair for longer… it all benefits your body and your health.

You can get ALLLLL the juicy details in the guide if you’re interested. It’s a free download HERE.

If you are interested in using the power of the mind to uplevel your life, I share mindset expertise every week, along with fun & insightful stories from my own life path from 80s hair band superfan to chemical engineer to health & mindset coach (what a journey!).

You will also see plenty of health promoting tips and recipes because I am blown away by the power of intermittent fasting + a healthy diet to prevent & reverse just about any health concern Mindset plays a big part in health and healing too, the power of the Mind Body connection is pretty mind blowing.