15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy →

Wonderful advice that has been given to me throughout the numerous workshops I’ve done over the years.  I can tell you that it’s good advice ;)

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Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go:

1. Give up your need to always be right.There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?


2. Give up your need for control. Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel.

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.” Lao Tzu

3. Give up on blame. Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life.

4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk. Oh my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that.

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle

5. Give up your limiting beliefs about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly!

“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle

6. Give up complaining. Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, maaany things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.

7. Give up the luxury of criticism. Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all.

8. Give up your need to impress others. Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take of all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly.

9. Give up your resistance to change. Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell

10. Give up labels. Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. “The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer

11. Give up on your fears. Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place.
“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

12. Give up your excuses. Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 99.9% of the time are not even real.

13. Give up the past. I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.

14. Give up attachment. This is a concept that, for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another,  attachment comes from a place of fear, while love… well, real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.

15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations. Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves.  You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.

Saying "No"

What does it mean to say “No”? It means alot of things to alot of people, and has the power to bring up many things for many people on both the giving and receiving ends.  What is your relationship to saying no?  What is your response when you receive one?  We often think saying no is closing off our window of opportunity, yet many times saying no really means saying YES.

Recently, I have been in the space of what it is to say “No”.  You see, I am building an Integrative Healing Center here in Philadelphia: it’s an amazing project. Quite frankly, it’s my dream come true.  Our center will be the manifestation of our ethos of what Healing is: a place where well-care, gardens, and creativity will dance and play and facilitate community—one of the most essential facets of a healthy and joyous life.

So, in this process of planning and co-creating this center with my incredible partner, Dr.Sarah Cohen (who currently is a Fellow with Dr.Andrew Weil), I have been thinking about what I want to invest my time in now since this is filling up so much of it.  We’ve had meetings, envisioning sessions, classes at Wharton for business plan writing, dances with property and real estate agents, and we’re now embarking on the (GASP) writing of the business plan itself…something I’m terribly scared of!

So, a few weeks back, I had a very difficult decision to make: I got asked by my community to curate the Healing Arts workshops at a beloved festival again this year.  I love this event, I love the people that create this event; it’s a beautiful music and art weekend camping festival set off the Delaware coast in the grassy farmland….so luscious!!!  I was a part of the event for the past 3 years, facilitating workshops or curating them, and it exemplifies my passion for community, creativity, and healing.  I wanted to do it again, but my gut said “Don’t do it. You’re going to die of exhaustion if you do.”  

I thought about making it work.  I thought about how it would help me to have a little more income.  And then I thought about how exhausting it was….truly a labor of LOVE.  My gut wouldn’t stop telling me it wasn’t the right time.

I thought about saying no…and it scared me to the core.  I decided to look deeper into this.  Why was I so scared?  What if I lose my opportunity to do it again if I say no?  What if I am judged?  What if I lose the perceived "power" it affords me?  What if I don’t get asked to DJ the festival again because I turned this offering down (I’m also a DJ, and I’ve been playing this event since 2009)?  

These were all really valid reasons.  Or…. were they?  Maybe they were valid, but…

Maybe they were all just ego-based fears.  

I decided that I had to Say No.I decided that it was finally time to take a risk and be authentic and Say No to something in order to Say YES to something else…

My big BIG dream.

It was hard. It challenged me on so many levels. But it was the best thing to do.  In my body, I felt light and free after I decided to say no. In the presence of my “no”, the Sanctuary Healing Arts Space at the festival now has the opportunity to grow through other contributors, and that is indeed special. 

Something my dear AMAZING healer & yogi friend, Liana Cameris, always says to me in regards to decision making really kept ringing through my ears during this process.  She says: 

"See how you feel inside when faced with a decision.  If it feels light in your body when you think about it, GO with it; if it feels heavy, perhaps you should pass it up."

Such wise words indeed. Now I have the space and time to commit to my dream of Healing here in this beautiful city of brotherly love….

AND you’ll be seeing me at the festival throwin’ down some Global Beats for your Soul ;)

Research finally links sugar to obesity. →


What Eating Too Much Sugar Does to Your Brain


Overeating, poor memory formation, learning disorders, depression – all have been linked in recent research to the over-consumption of sugar. And these linkages point to a problem that is only beginning to be better understood: what our chronic intake of added sugar is doing to our brains.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the average American consumes 156 pounds of added sugar per year. That’s five grocery store shelves loaded with 30 or so one pound bags of sugar each.  If you find that hard to believe, that’s probably because sugar is so ubiquitous in our diets that most of us have no idea how much we’re consuming.  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) puts the amount at 27.5 teaspoons of sugar a day per capita, which translates to 440 calories – nearly one quarter of a typical 2000 calorie a day diet.

The key word in all of the stats is “added.”  While a healthy diet would contain a significant amount of naturally occurring sugar (in fruits and grains, for example), the problem is that we’re chronically consuming much more added sugar in processed foods.  That’s an important clarification because our brains need sugar every day to function.  Brain cells require two times the energy needed by all the other cells in the body; roughly 10% of our total daily energy requirements.  This energy is derived from glucose (blood sugar), the gasoline of our brains. Sugar is not the brain’s enemy — added sugar is.

Research indicates that a diet high in added sugar reduces the production of a brain chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Without BDNF, our brains can’t form new memories and we can’t learn (or remember) much of anything. Levels of BDNF are particularly low in people with an impaired glucose metabolism–diabetics and pre-diabetics–and as the amount of BDNF decreases, sugar metabolism worsens.

In other words, chronically eating added sugar reduces BDNF, and then the lowered levels of the brain chemical begin contributing to insulin resistance, which leads to type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which eventually leads to a host of other health problems.  Once that happens, your brain and body are in a destructive cycle that’s difficult if not impossible to reverse.

Research has also linked low BDNF levels to depression and dementia. It’s possible that low BDNF may turn out to be the smoking gun in these and other diseases, like Alzheimer’s, that tend to appear in clusters in epidemiological studies.  More research is being conducted on this subject, but what seems clear in any case is that a reduced level of BDNF is bad news for our brains, and chronic sugar consumption is one of the worst inhibitory culprits.

Other studies have focused on sugar’s role in over-eating.  We intuitively know that sugar and obesity are linked, but the exact reason why hasn’t been well understood until recently.  Research has shown that chronic consumption of added sugar dulls the brain’s mechanism for telling you to stop eating.  It does so by reducing activity in the brain’s anorexigenic oxytocin system, which is responsible for throwing up the red “full” flag that prevents you from gorging.  When oxytocin cells in the brain are blunted by over-consumption of sugar, the flag doesn’t work correctly and you start asking for seconds and thirds, and seeking out snacks at midnight.

What these and other studies strongly suggest is that most of us are seriously damaging ourselves with processed foods high in added sugar, and the damage begins with our brains.  Seen in this light, chronic added-sugar consumption  is no less a problem than smoking or alcoholism. And the hard truth is that we may have only begun to see the effects of what the endless sugar avalanche is doing to us.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/04/01/what-eating-too-much-sugar-does-to-your-brain/

Spring Vegetable suggestions from RODALE! →

What a sweet and informative article!  Health starts with what we put in our temples! 

"It’s important to buy lettuce locally and in season. Why? Much of the lettuce sold in winter is grown in California, where lettuce fields are irrigated with water from the Colorado River that’s contaminated with perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel known to harm thyroid function."