Fall into Wellness: Explore Core Beliefs & Delicious Pumpkin Recipes!

Welcome to this week’s update with some quick, fun, and useful info to inspire you to bring a bit more health & wellness into your life. A quick shot of MINDSET and a quick shot of HEALTH each week.

Insights from Jennifer

This week I am sharing a little insight from my journey with alcohol. Oh Lord! It’s been a little crazy. I share here in hopes of helping others wherever they are on their wellness path with any of these topics. I totally respect wherever you are with alcohol from never liking the stuff to quitting, reducing, or happily enjoying alcoholic bevvies.

For me… I am 52 now. I was born in the 70s, a teenager in the 80s, and went to my first kegger party not long after turning 13 I went to engineering school in the remote upper peninsula of Michigan at Michigan Technological University where the average annual snowfall is just shy of 17 FEET making it one of the snowiest places in Michigan due to lake effect snow from Lake Superior.

It’s cold, dark, and snowy all winter long, engineering school can be tough, and drinking is sort of a way of life for most MTU students and Yoopers in general (nickname for residents of Michigan’s upper peninsula). Heck, throw in all of Michigan, Wisconsin, and probably the entire Midwest for the drinking and bar culture. I was raised in the lower peninsula where someone’s parents thought it a good idea to throw a kegger party for middle school kids in 1985.

I don’t even have time to get into the drinking culture of corporate jobs, especially the sales & marketing end… maybe another time. Suffice it to say, I was sort of steeped in drinking culture. I have come a long way and everything I have done to improve my overall health and wellbeing has led me to drink less and less in my 40s and now into my 50s. My liver thanks me.

I just recently saw the term Intermittent Drinking on social media. And that describes what I do with taking long breaks and participating in things like Dry January, Dry July, and Sober October which I am currently in the middle of. I am also considering aiming for 100 days after this month, then possibly teetotaler as I honestly enjoy non-alcoholic drinks more these days than alcohol. And I LOVE waking up on weekends feeling refreshed with not even a hint of fuzziness. We shall see where this goes for me, I will keep y’all updated on the journey from keg stands to herbal tea .

This Week’s Shot of MINDSET

In my training as a PSYCH-K® Preferred Facilitator where I help people work with the subconscious mind, one of the fastest ways to shift mindset and beliefs, we can work with something called CORE BELIEFS. These are pairs of beliefs around life in general or health & wellbeing, my particular area of passion.

The bulk of our beliefs are formed from birth to age 7 due to being in a constant state of theta brainwaves, absorbing everything around us and forming beliefs from very early influences in our lives like parents, friends, school, church, or whatever was happening around us. These beliefs often no longer serve us later in life.

With core beliefs, we can test to see if the subconscious believes the positive aspect of these core belief pairs or the negative and then… quickly shift to the positive so those supportive beliefs are embedded in the subconscious which is running the show 95% of the time in our lives.

Here are a few examples of Core Beliefs and Optimal Health & Wellbeing Beliefs:

I love myself. / I hate myself.

I welcome changes in my life. / I want things to stay the way they are.

I expect the best to happen. / I expect the worst to happen.

I deserve to be happy. / I deserve to be unhappy.

I feel a deep sense of personal safety and security in the world. / I feel a deep sense of personal dread and fear in the world.

I confidently express myself, verbally and emotionally. / I am hesitant and afraid to express myself, verbally and emotionally.

I am sharing a few examples here to get you thinking about the types of thoughts and beliefs that sort of run on a loop in your head. Do you tend to align with the positive, life affirming type of core beliefs or does your brain want to run the old, deeply worn grooves of the negative beliefs?

I know for me, being raised in poverty for a while with teenage parents… life was a little unsteady in the beginning when little 4 year old Jennifer looked around the trailer park. My parents absolutely loved and adored my brother and me, but were a little ill-equipped at parenting starting that young. That early environment definitely informed my beliefs about life.

I have done a lot of work on my beliefs about being SAFE in the world and it has helped me immensely to live in more of a state of happiness and peace instead of constant fight or flight mode.

This Week’s Shot of HEALTH

Somewhere along my journey of learning all about the health benefits of moving toward a more plant based diet, I found Marla and John of Vegan Street. They put out a fun newsletter every month with all sorts of interesting info from the vegan world, including great recipes. This month they shared an entire free pumpkin recipe collection with savory recipes like Pumpkin Alfredo Sauce, Pumpkin Mac & Cheese, and Pumpkin Hummus and tons of sweet recipe ideas like these Peanut Butter Pumpkin Blondies that I will be making SOON for Simon and me:

You can find this whole collection of awesome Pumpkin Recipes by CLICKING HERE.

I am off to make myself another chicory coffee and wash the quilt that one of our cats puked up a hairball on Oh, the joys of having cats!

If you are interested in using the power of the mind to uplevel your life, I plan to 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.