Stabbing Myself with a Hair Pick + Easy Soup & Stew Recipes

So I stabbed myself in the ear with a hair pick this morning. It was the ear that had 3 piercings. 2 of which I added myself back in the 80s when I thought asymmetric piercings would be super cool. The middle piercing, which hasn’t had an actual earring in years, actually started to bleed from the force of my hair pick to the head.

I googled a picture of an ’80s hair pick’ and this image came up. It was entitled ‘Vintage 90s Teal Hair Pick’. Y’All! I owned THIS EXACT PICK for probably all of the 1990s The one involved in the stabbing has pastel flowers on it, stiffer plastic, and sort of sharper ends to it, hence my injury.

I obviously wasn’t fully awake this morning. It takes me a while to get going in the mornings, especially before my green tea & chicory coffee.

My dear friend Shelly was my roommate in the late 90s when we were both starting our chemical engineering careers at Dow Corning. Shelly is a natural extrovert. I am not. The first few days we lived together she would perkily start talking to me in the mornings. In a regular voice, not even a whisper.

I was silently styling the spiral perm or putting in curlers or Lord knows what I was doing to my hair back then. Shelly speaking to me was actually SHOCKING to my system. I was so used to silence in my morning routine. I sort of squinted and glared at Shelly and whispered “You… TALK… In the morning… {long silence} I DON’T!”

Shelly respected my slow, quiet morning state and kept it zipped in the mornings from then on We both laughed about this little confrontation and she would imitate me telling her how I don’t talk in the morning.

This Week’s Shot of MINDSET

I share this morning’s mishap to illustrate the fact that I am not always a calm, happy, perfect health & mindset kind of gal. I have my moments just like all of us. Things trigger me into not-so-healthy thoughts & emotions. Ragey is a term I use when I am really out of whack. Ask Simon if he’s ever seen Ragey Jennifer

Intense pain can trigger this for a lot of us I believe. When you just woke up a minute ago and stab a sharp pick into your ear instead of through your hair, the nerve endings start screaming and fire up a reaction. Same thing happens with stubbing a toe into a sharp corner or biting down hard on your lip. YEEEOOOWWW!

Luckily, I can use the healthy mindset and lifestyle tools I have gathered over the years to quickly restore my equilibrium and get back to my preferred states of happiness, love, joy, and a very important one for me… PEACE I like going about my days feeling calm & peaceful, not riled up by thoughts and emotions that are NOT HELPFUL.

Here are my current Top 3 Tools to help you go from Ragey to Peaceful (or at least less ragey):

BREATHE. Common advice. Often heard and understood, but how often do we really stop and do it? Your mind & body will physically start to calm with just ONE deep breath in through the nose and slow breath out through the mouth, letting your shoulders drop down on the exhale. 3 deep breaths like this and things feel much calmer.
Look at Your Thoughts. Things in life happen. What makes us crazy is our thoughts about whatever just happened. Take a quick inventory of what is going on in your head and whether those thoughts are HELPFUL or UNHELPFUL. If they are unhelpful, I will say “thank you brain , but those thoughts are not helpful and we can let them go.” Then reach for more helpful thoughts to move through the situation.
H.A.L.T. This is also common advice for a reason. Have a look at whether you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. Then give yourself what you need in the moment:

Healthy food to bring blood sugar up and feed your brain some glucose.
5 minutes of journaling to process anger and let it out on the page so it doesn’t hurt yourself or others.
Human interaction or doggy/kitty interaction to give & receive kindness and love (very important these days in our online worlds). Sometimes we just need actual physical touch or a face-to-face conversation.
Allowing yourself to sit or even lie down for a few minutes to rest, a nap if you have time for it, or a plan to get into your jammies and go to bed early for some extra sleep.

Remember PROGRESS NOT PERFECTION. You don’t have to do all of these things and handle your thoughts & emotions perfectly all the time. If you can just grab on to one or two things when you really need it instead of reverting to the same old patterns and responses that don’t give you the happiness and peace you want… then you are making progress.

Celebrate that! I promise, little changes add up over time to a much happier and more peaceful life when we realize we have the power to recognize and change the old patterns, thoughts, and beliefs.

This Week’s Shot of HEALTH

Speaking of giving ourselves what we need, what could be better than the warm comfort of a nice bowl of soup or stew? Give these a try:

30 HEALTHY WINTER SOUP & STEW RECIPES

It’s December already. We are heading toward the Winter Solstice and losing daylight fast. It’s probably cold outside where most of us live. Even in Charlotte, North Carolina. We do get cold and snow almost every winter.

Time to grab your soup pot, slow cooker, or Instant Pot and make a big batch of healthy soup. These recipes are great for dinner with a hearty chunk of bread, maybe a side salad, served over rice, served over a roasted potato or sweet potato, or with a few oyster crackers. Those are our favorite ways to enjoy soups and stews.

We make enough to freeze portions for easy, healthy lunches later. We stretch the leftovers by serving with the extra starches or salads. Cook once, eat 2 or 3 meals. Enjoy and let me know if you have a favorite. I am craving some smoky split pea soup, I will definitely be making some this week.

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.