There is really no point in my giving my advice when they don’t really want to hear it. Of course, I understand. When I was that age I didn’t want to hear it from my mother either.

So when do we give up? When do we just let them live like anyone else that we don’t know?

When they come to us with problems, just nod and say okay, oh yeah, whatever. Let them give off steam and have their say because that’s all they really want. They don’t want to hear mother’s advice.

Personally I’m glad. I’m tired of having to dole out advice and be always there to console and pat on the shoulder.

Live your life young women and I will live mine. That goes for young men too if you have had boys.

This is freedom time in our lives. Time to do what we want, when we want, where we want and not be feeling guilty because our kids are in a bad place.

Move on. Show them love when they ask for it. Affection when they are feeling needy, but leave them be. They are grown adults.

Oh, by the way, love your grandchildren…they are the next generation. Maybe you wil have better luck with them.

April 28, 2012. On April 28th I travelled 13.1 miles in the Country Music Half Marathon but the journey didn’t start there. It started 51 weeks earlier.

Every year on the Sunday before Mother’s Day my family has a reunion of sorts. We meet in East Tennessee near the Hiwassee river and hike up to the “old home place.”  It’s not an incredibly strenuous hike but it is fairly steep at points. It’s mostly a fun time with folks I don’t see as often as I would like – there’s lots of time to visit as we hike and lots of pictures taken.

The next day I had to travel on business. I arrived at my destination around lunch time and was having a wonderful meal at Red Robin while I checked Facebook. One of my cousins had posted some pictures from the reunion and I stared at images of me in disbelief. Could I have really let myself go that badly?  I’ve never spent much time in front of the mirror but the mental image I had of myself sure didn’t match what I saw in those photos. I knew that I needed to make dramatic changes and I decided to start immediately.

A young man at our church had begun losing weight with the help of an iPhone app called My Fitness Pal. It’s a great tool to track your caloric intake as well as any exercise. It also gives you practical guidance on the number of calories to consume daily and how much weight to expect to lose each week if you stick to your plan. I downloaded the app, set up my profile and goals only to realize that I had consumed my entire daily caloric content in one meal at Red Robin!  I made it home, hit the treadmill, ate a banana for dinner and resolved that things would change.

These are the things I decided:

1) I would exercise every day, starting with walking 30 minutes.

2) I would find healthy alternatives for breakfast, lunch and snacks.

3) I would enjoy the same meal that my family ate for dinner but not overindulge.

4) I would not drink calories.

By the time Fall rolled around my 30 minute daily walks had stretched to an hour (two hours on Saturdays) and I had started running intervals. I had lost 30 lbs. and was still losing. By Christmas I was down 40 lbs. and I was running four days a week with 6-7 mile long runs.

At a Christmas party I visited with some friends who run marathons and I shared that I had considered trying the Country Music 1/2 Marathon but wasn’t sure I had it in me. When when I told them my time and mileage, they encouraged me to go for it. They also encouraged me to sign up for training with Fleet Feet [a running store in Brentwood, TN]. Looking back, while I believe I would have finished the half, I don’t think I would have done as well or been as confident without their help.

Race day was quite an experience!  I was planning on connecting with the Fleet Feet pace group I had been running with but couldn’t find them. I roamed around through some of the corrals and took in the sights but when the horn sounded for my corral to start I was alone (among 35,000 other runners and walkers). I cruised through the first four miles or so but by the time I reached the intersection of 12th and Wedgwood I was beginning to struggle. It was here that I connected with two of the Fleet Feet runners from my pace group. We encouraged each other up the hill but lost track of each other as we went down 16th Ave.

Before I reached the gulch I had to walk for a bit and by the time I reached the 10 mile mark I was having a really rough time. I looked in the crowd and spotted Brittany, the PT from Results Physiotherapy who treated me for some knee pain during training. She jumped in the road and ran with me for a bit to keep me going!

At the 11 mile mark I saw an older man go down in the middle of the street. It made me feel like backing it down a bit and I alternated running and walking for the next mile.  When I hit the 12 mile point one of the runners from my pace group caught me and kept me going to the end of the race. We finished side by side…vertical…running.

I had hoped to run the entire distance and I had hoped to finish faster, but I did finish.

51 weeks, more than 800 miles, and 40 lbs. later; I finished.

What’s next?

Proper planting and post planting care means less maintenance, fewer pests and more produce and beautiful flowers in your landscape.

1. Start by selecting healthy plants free of insect and disease problems. There’s no need to spend money on problems.  And keep in mind that bigger is not always better.  Instead look for compact plants with sturdy stems.  The leaves should be deep green or the proper color for that variety.  Avoid plants that show signs of stress such as spots, brown leaf edges, and holes.  And when all things are equal, purchase the perennials with multiple stems.
2. Keep your purchase properly watered before and after planting. Check transplants daily and twice a day when temperatures rise, watering as needed.  Increase success and reduce the stress transplants often face.  Apply a plant strengthener such as JAZ Spray to protect potted plants from drying out until you are able to plant. Or apply to transplants to get your plants off to a vigorous start.  These organic products are not fertilizers but rather naturally occurring molecules that work like an immunization to help new and established plants better tolerate heat, drought, insects, disease, and other challenges plants face.
3. Prepare the soil before planting. Though not glamorous building a good foundation for your garden will pay off this season and beyond.  Dig one or two inches of compost, peat moss or other organic matter and a low nitrogen slow release fertilizer into the top 12 inches of the soil.
4. Now slide, don’t pull, the plants out of their containers to avoid damaging their roots and stems. If they resist, gently squeeze small flexible pots or roll larger pots on their sides over the ground.  This loosens the roots, releasing the pot from the container.
5. Gently tease any roots that encircle (girdle) the root ball. Or use a knife to slice through girdling roots or the tangled mass that often develops at the bottom of the pot.  This encourages the roots to explore the soil beyond the planting hole.  And a bigger root system means healthier plants that are more productive and beautiful.
6. Set your plants at the same depth they were growing in their container. Tall leggy tomatoes are the exception.  These can be planted deeper or in shallow trenches to encourage roots to form along the buried stem.  Cover the roots with soil and gently tamp to insure good root to soil contact.  Water new plantings thoroughly; moistening the rootball, planting hole, and beyond.  Spread a thin layer of shredded leaves, evergreen needles or other mulch over the soil to conserve moisture, suppress weeds, and keep the roots cooler when hot weather moves in for the summer.
7. Check new plantings every other day and water thoroughly and often enough to keep the soil slightly moist. Gradually reduce the frequency until your plants only need to be watered once a week in heavy clay soils and twice a week in sandy soils. Of course you’ll need to water more often in hot weather.
8. And don’t forget about the rest of your landscape. Plant strengtheners can be applied to established plants to prepare them for the often stressful season ahead.  Treated plants will be better able to tolerate heat and drought as well as attacks from insects and diseases.

So get out and start planting to make this the best gardening season yet.

Abraham Maslow, a well-known American psychologist, thought that peak-experience can help us to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment. According to University of Rochester’s Dr. Sandy Stahlman, “Maslow believed that we should study and cultivate peak-experience, so that we can teach those in our culture to those who ‘have never had them or who repress or suppress them,’ providing them a route to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment.”

I experienced the most amazing awareness of truth or peak-experience ten years ago, and it changed my perception and influenced both my psychology practice and how I am writing my second book.

As I was driving home from seeing clients at my office, from the left side of the top of my head, I felt and heard the words, “Stop analyzing and theorizing, just be.” Then, a beautiful flood of poetry caused me to cry and sob. I didn’t want to stop the flow so I continued to drive, and for 45 minutes I experienced such profound beauty, similar to poetry with crescendos of sobbing and pure awe. The message continued, “Stop analyzing, theorizing, and be.”

At the end of this experience, I felt light and full of love and connection. It was truth.

As I walked into the chinese restaurant where I usually stop for dinner on Thursday nights, I felt a connection to everyone in there. I wanted to love them and share with them my experience, but I didn’t. However, those 45 minutes of bliss and beauty left me wanting more truth.

Victor Frankl, a psychologist and medical doctor who studied peak-experiences and also experienced one, shares in his book A Man’s Search for Meaning, “A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.”

Afterward, Frankl added “self-transcendence” to Maslow’s hierarchy. Transcendeance means “going beyond,” while “self-transcendence” means going beyond a prior form or state of oneself.

Before that night in my car, I had never experienced what others describe as a “stream of consciousness” or a peak-experience. It revealed to me a universal truth. There was no doubt, and it was beautiful.

Healing and Therapeutic Effects

According to Wikipedia, “peak experience tends to be uplifting and ego-transcending; it releases creative energies; it affirms the meaning and value of existence; it gives a sense of purpose to the individual; it gives a feeling of integration; it leaves a permanent mark on the individual, evidently changing them for the better.”

Peak experiences usually come on suddenly and are often inspired by deep meditation, exposure to great art or music, or nature’s beauty. They can occur when your mind is open and during activities such as dance, running, and writing.

As Maslow shares in his own book, Religion, Values, and Peak-Experiences, “Then, I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss.”

Peak-experiences can also be extremely therapeutic in that they tend to increase the individual’s free will, self-determination, and creativity. Maslow claimed that all individuals are capable of peak-experiences. Virtually everyone, he suggested has a number of peak-experiences in the course of their life, but often such experiences are taken for granted.

In so-called “non-peakers,” peak-experiences are somehow resisted and suppressed. Maslow argued that peak experiences should be studied and cultivated, so that they can be introduced to those who have never had them or who resist them, providing them a route to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment.

My experience seemed to be related to the words, “Stop analyzing and theorizing, just be,” which may seem difficult for a psychologist to understand, but it was a deep truth that changed my perception of “doing” versus “being.” As a result, my practice has become more based on mindfulness over the past five years.

One year following my peak experience, I had a similar experience that lasted about ten minutes. It has been five years since my first experience, but I eagerly await another. These natural peak experiences are possible for everyone and they help people achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment.

Why don’t we experience more of them naturally or do we take them for granted when they occur? Would life be different if we encouraged peak experiences? Would we make better choices? Choose better mates? Create less drama, less pain, less suffering. Would we live, run, or dance with more purpose with universal truth as our guide?

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(Click here for the full list of reports, free to download to all VN members.)

As we plan our next series of Vibrant Nation reports, we would love to hear from you. What Vibrant Nation reports would you like to see next? Post your suggestions in this thread! We’re listening!

PS – If you prefer to send us your suggestions via email, please email them to info@vibrantnation.com and use “Vibrant Nation report topic” as the subject line. Thanks!

From dianeperazzo

I have eliminated refined sugar and white flour and have been trying to keep my net carbs (grams of carbs minus grams of fibre) to between 20 – 30 grams per day.  I can’t believe the difference in my health.  Where do I begin?

• I have been sleeping more soundly,
• I don’t have the sugar highs and lows so my energy throughout the day is more consistent,
• my skin and hair look healthier,
• my weight is going down by about a half a pound a week,
• I have stopped having heart palpitations and as a result have increased by caffeine intake a bit (which helps combat dementia in older women).
• Above all, I have no food cravings. . . I eat because I’m hungry and I am not tempted by sweet desserts.

It has been great!

[This comment was originally posted in this conversation. ~ Eds.]

Have you cut back on sugar and white flour?
What results did you see?

This postcard was written by VN blogger Amy Ruhlin

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