Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Gratitude Practice of Not Wasting Anything

Gratitude is a word we all know.

Gratitude for cotton candy pink flowers that are reminders of life as a gift. — Cotton candy flowers can spark gratitude as reminders in what we have.

I have gratitude for pretty in pink cotton candy color flowers, reminding me that it’s a summer season of life.

The flowers are a gift from nature and the people who planted the bush. Both are gifts in this life…

And life works in our favor when we treat life as a gift.

…When we say “thank you” and are grateful when we’re given something like a present, compliment, or other kind words and gestures.

…And when we feel gratitude in what we have and what’s around us that we get to taste, touch, see, smell, and do.

My first memorable grips with what gratitude meant in words was in a book I saw and picked up that was different than others around in the bookstores at the time.

In Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, she wrote, “how could I expect more from the Universe when I didn’t appreciate what I already had?”

That was curious wisdom and encouragement for me. It helped make me wonder and evolve to become that person who could gain those deeper inner perspectives.

The 365 days of inspiring words in the book had new meaning and concepts I had never heard of before.

Back then, I didn’t know what a gratitude practice was.

Those were pre-New Age law of attraction days.

That today is Old Age stuff 😊

And we know what’s old often becomes new again.

…Like a gratitude practice.

These days, it’s common for many of us as our culture has evolved.

Back then, I only aspired to those simple abundant life practices, so that was something I worked toward without knowing it would become so.

That’s how life is rigged in our favor… setting us up before we even know what we want in the future.

Which btw, no past experiences you have are wasted in your life. They are there for a reason.

…And for some reason, I picked up the book again over 20 years later.

And in this life influencing book, the entry on January 21 reads: “Today, be willing to believe that a companion Spirit is leading you every step of the way, and knows the next step.”

…Back then, I had no idea what those words meant when the book sat boldly on my night stand in 1996 (a year after it was first published).

But my soul felt good reading over those words.

And today I know exactly what those words mean.

Today I have gratitude that my Spirit is aligned with those words.

And that’s one special way of how this life can be so awesome… when you discover that-secret-something that’s so profoundly deep and bigger than yourself and everything else in life you’ve known so far.

How can you not celebrate?

…When a discovery is bigger than yourself..

And this inner discovery was bigger than myself.

It was life changing.

And I needed a life change and a kick in the pants from the Universe to make some changes.

Journaling helped unravel me along with many self-help books on my journey.

Those were my life teachers.

…What books helped shape your ways?

Plus, the Simple Abundance book mentioned gratitude journaling.

And the book also mentioned abundance concepts (besides being part of the title of the book).

That was the first time I ever remember the concept introduced to me.

Because I didn’t grow up thinking of abundance.

But I aspired to abundance… dreaming about what that could be like someday! 💭

Dreams become reality when you let the bigger Universe work in your life and inside you.

…And you then purposefully stretch your mind muscles enough to go there.

That’s how I slowly let open space in and reframed abundance from a previous crowded, limited and victim mindset.

And within the new space, I invited more gratitude in.

Like with a simple way to show gratitude that anyone can do with the concept of not wasting… where you’re grateful for daily abundance in everyday things such as food abundance (that happens to be my passion place 🍽️).

So imagine all the vegetables growing and coming out of a summer garden. Or if you don’t have one 🙋🏻‍♀️, what’s available to you at abundant (indoor garden) grocery stores you shop in.

Either way, you have the option to save or waste food that’s not consumed.

And if you save, then you’re preserving food for another time or purposefully not wasting food.

In some ways, that can sound like a scarcity mindset (that builds up a limiting mindset), where there’s not more coming in or not enough.

…But the difference in message comes from inserting in Gratitude.

I’m grateful for this food.

…AND believing there’s plenty to go around.

And I’m thankful I’ve got unlimited access to new and different foods daily.

Then you’re allowing abundance in food to flow freely in your mind and life.

(Btw, you can do this for anything and everything to help yourself grow).

Where you’re taking belief into action, showing gratitude by not wasting.

Then you’re fully aligned with words matching actions.

Re-purposing and celebrating are ways to show gratitude and abundance.

…Oh, and when you think and live like that, you can be pretty darn sure that you’ll have plenty more coming your way! 💕

Gratitude is such a simple and powerful daily exercise for building up an abundant mindset… and to manifest your bigger dreams. 💭💭

Share this

Lagom Balance in Work, Life, and Relationships

Lagom is a Swedish concept I can live behind. It’s about balance and moderation. That’s what my healthy and happy blog embraces… and this was me soaking that up a few years back in Sweden!

Sweden’s Tradsgardforeingen – stopping to appreciate the flowers. 🌺

I find balance exists in pushing yourself but enjoying too (and often!), where eating a sweet bite but not the whole cake is healthy.

Good health is happiness and a healthy body. And balance helps your health.

It exists in the boundaries you create for yourself.

And if relationship boundaries are something you want to improve, be sure to read my empowering tips below👇

Boundary setting is a disciplined balance area that I’m proud of in my life today, but wasn’t something I practiced early on when I wasn’t clear about what boundaries were crossed.

Back in my 20s I didn’t have work-life balance that spilled over into my personal life. I worked 50-60 office hours a week in my catering sales manager job in a hotel that was my office…

Hotels like hospitals never close. They’re probably the most hospitable places in the world because anyone can enter the space 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And that’s what my job hours often felt like with 5 exhausting, 10-hour minimum weekday workdays. Plus, after hour and weekend events (from event parties I planned during the week)… and ontop of that, rotating overnight hotel manager on duty shifts. I was sleep deprived.

…You’d think it would be great to dine and stay in a luxury hotel brand free of charge, but when you’re ON (and working), you get a different perspective of the 4-walls you’re in. Freedom feels like it’s on the other side of the parking lot smelling roses outside, or just doing home laundry.

Those working young adult year stripes I earned taught me that having work-life balance was more important than climbing the ladder to the top that had its imperfections.

So years later, I started over in 9-5 office management roles where I then lived and breathed balance. On the other side, I couldn’t help but gladly think: so this is how my college business major friends live.

…And appreciated that I could actually see them occasionally.

I was loving what 40 hours of work feels like. I had energy again. And free time that wasn’t spent resting in bed.

Then on, I vowed never to sacrifice work life-balance ever again.

And I’ve lived up to that intent and mission ever since.

That aligns with my health values and belief that life is too short to not smell the roses. 🌹

Like the ones I saw this past weekend:

Because you won’t get your time back is my mantra.

And I want to encourage you too to live a life of balance despite what others say about how it doesn’t exist (or some variation of that).

It’s the way to an optimal, healthy life.

Balance already exists in nature.

Where creatures in nature work to survive.

And that can be entertainment to watch…

It’s fun to watch wild squirrels doing their daily comedy acts and calming to see bees buzzing around in flowers.

And it survives on the concept of moderation.

Moderation is a Lagom lifestyle (Swedish origin) of not too much or too little.

That exists in healthy self-discipline (or self-control) ways.

If you deny yourself what you want, then that can hurt longterm and backfire for the initial intent or goal.

Or if you indulge without imposing any rules or guidelines, then that hurts even more as it adds to unhealthy points and you can also feel bad.

And maintaining consistency is in the middle.

Consistency is showing up regularly in the same way to make impact.

But not to be confused with staying comfortable that’s mediocre.

Consistency reaches for higher goals than being comfortable.

And consistency is stability if that’s a better word.

Small (consistent) acts add up. A little each day gets it done. And is the least painful way. You can do it hard or easy. It’s up to you.

Setting a goal or deadline lets you measure so you can more easily see where you are…

If you need to push more or do less (Lagom).

You embrace Lagom when you push: take some risks and reframe sacrifice (e.g. you get to do vs. suffering).

The action taking and the way you think help your balance and to re-calibrate closer to equilibrium. ⚖️

And if we don’t get off our seesaw balance a little, we can be blinded from our balanced perspective.

The secret is to not get too far away from the seesaw balance. And that comes from practice.

Balance is a life art.

And this is a winning game you can play with yourself daily to live out balance (as nature intended) and feel accomplished.

Lagom balance is easier on your own, until (new) work and relationships enter.

Relationship Boundary Rules

I find that when I’m 100% consistent with my boundaries, then I’m 💯 crystal clear when I’m tested in relationships.

And all of us are tested from time to time.

This happens with others who are in the business of crossing boundaries (that’s usually not intentional as we’re all different).

I’m sure you can relate in your world.

…Where your emotions are tested like an anxiety wave moment that passes.

Sometimes it’s a communication way expressed by another or it’s an ask that you don’t want to partake in but feel obligated.

These are good times to exercise boundaries, and nicely express your “no.”

If it’s communication boundaries crossed, I make sure I let work relationships know how to communicate with me and at what times.

If I worked in a crisis or emergency room setting where it’s timely situations or life or death, that would be different. In my past world, that was weddings.

But for standard office matters where the paper work is there tomorrow, I don’t make rule exceptions. And especially with those I interact with regularly. Because if you let things slide once, you’ll be doing it again. That’s rule #1.

I stick to this for meeting boundaries for others who have to reschedule. If they are rescheduling, they work with my availability. That’s Rule #2. Because they won’t respect your time if you don’t respect your time.

And today you can practice these rules with casual (non-work relationship) people you text message with so you get in a good habit.

Consider it’s so easy to send messages these days in microseconds. You can do this faster than you tie your shoe.

And on the receiving end, your time and calm emotional space can easily be invaded with a thoughtless or misunderstood message at your hip.

Remember before we had texting communication ways, we had mailed letters, phone calls, and email.

Those were delayed ways that you didn’t have to sort through right away.

We still have those ways available.

And you can wisely use them with people who don’t have text-iquette… who didn’t get the memo message.

You know who I’m talking about in your life! 😊

And ya know what I mean…. they keep texting you before you’ve even responded once, taking away from your Lagom calm head space as your phone is pinging off the hook.

You can re-write your rules if a sender starts growing needy and communicates too much and too often that isn’t aligned with your life.

Simply write back… “I’ll write back when I’m available (or at ___)” so it’s crystal clear you drew the line in the sand, aka boundaries. No emojis needed.

Believe me their feelings aren’t hurt as they move on to communicate with someone else since you’re not available.

And if they didn’t get your message, then you know that you did the right thing with your first reply… so you can simply answer in silence the second or next time.

And if it’s a work-someone crossing boundaries, let them know how to (newly) communicate with you. Give them two other methods like setting up a phone call or email. Some people need reminders and you have to train them a few times before it sinks in.

They will get it when you stick to replying in only those ways.

And as reward, you get a Lagom life. Remember, you won’t get your time back. It’s never too late to rewrite your balanced life.

Share this

Radish Salad – Tomato Substitute

Radish salad is one that isn’t often a first choice for most. Because fresh radishes are bitter, pepper-spicy.

But the salad recipe below is more sweet than bitter notes.

This salad is radi(sh)-cally DIFFERENT.

And radishes are super healthy and I have a way to lessen the bitter.

You can even replace tomatoes and cherry tomatoes in your salad for this similar but different radishes in a radish salad.

You may even fall in love (with this no-tomato salad again). Radishes are a year-round produce staple that often gets overlooked and not over picked in stores.

And it’s a good substitute for tomato because some people can’t eat tomatoes despite their bright attractiveness and summery abundance.

Because tomatoes are acidic. Even though they’re healthy lycopene food.

And radishes have a different profile (or personality if food were people).

Radishes prepared the way I describe below look a bit like yellow potatoes (also abundant), but have no starchy calories, so that’s another good reason to ra-dish.

This radish salad recipe is a new way but a traditional salad in that there’s no cooking meal prep involved… gotta love that!

A salad is great in the hot or summer months when you want to eat lighter and meet weight loss goals.

Red radishes are available and abundant year round in most stores.

They’re usually packaged next to their baby carrot root veggie friends… and cost about the same affordable pennies each as price.

Plus the packaged ones have been de-stemmed so they’re ready to eat after you rinse them off.

But unlike the carrot, the radish is part of the Brassica family that Cousin broccoli, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, and cauliflower are all in.

There are many interesting types of radishes with names just as curious, like Watermelon, Cherry Belle, Daikon, Easter, and French Breakfast radishes.

But keeping it simple and wallet-friendly, you can use red radishes for your radish salad.

And to make the radishes soft and less bitter, there are 2 ways that I’ll share here…

The first way is: instead of cutting or thinly slicing up in round radish coins fresh from raw radishes, wash off your radishes like you would, put them back in the plastic bag and tie up the top or in a freezer safe plastic bag with a ziplock for at least 2 days.

Don’t bother to dry them off (…even easier!).

The moisture helps them mush a little.

The radishes will transform and change color.

Where instead of the vibrant magenta-ish reddish purple pink color, you get a white-washed pale faded magenta color with a slightly burnt light brown hue around looking more like a yellow potato.

Did I do my paint color description justice?

When you’re a few days away from working with the radish in your salad and meals, you can take the bag out of the freezer and place in the fridge in a noticeable place you won’t forget about (but you can intentionally temporarily forget).

If you add to you fridge mid-week, they’ll be ready for your weekend salad.

There is some exercise of time and patience here… but if you leave the radishes as an afterthought, then it’s just time…

…So just fuh-gettabout it!

And then when you’re ready to use your radishes for your weekend dish, they will be soft and squishy… and if you squeezed one like a cherry tomato, it would squirt juice across the room like a water gun

Except it’s more like watery juice than tomato juice.

So that’s the first way.

The second way takes less time.

You’d freeze your radish like the first step in the first way already mentioned.

But then after they have formed icicles after a day or longer, bring the bag out to room temperature and place the bag in a bowl.

There will be a lot of juice coming out that you can use for a gazpacho or some other juicy food bowl dish.

After a day and overnight at room temps, they will get soft. But the color will be more like the faded pink-purplish colors in case that matters for your dish.

…Like these that are ready to be cut and used for your radish salad.

Tips for radishes from frozen:

Cut the squishy radishes with a serated knife (with jagged edges). Pierce into each radish first, in order to let out the radish water and air that has accumulated like a pressure cooker… except they won’t explode on their own.

[Btw, if you use a butter knife, the radish will just roll around like a inflatable beach ball.]

With prepared radishes from frozen, you should notice easily the less bitter pungent smell (than that of raw radishes).

…Ya never thought you could have so much fun with produce, did ya?

And then you can cut up the radish bits to the sizes you like and place them in your salad.

They also go well with pasta salads or an Italian bean salad with radicchio.

…And btw… radishes and radicchio are not related. That would be ridiculo! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

But they pair well on a salad plate together.

…And wow-za, you have one bright plate that’s calling. The contrast against a bed of spinach or Iceberg lettuce is inspiring… and if you add Romaine lettuce, that would be a salad melange party.

Anding sweet diced pimento peppers, chopped red bell peppers, and corn also dazzle up the dish.

If you’re sensitive to cheese dairy, but you still want to add, you may find buffalo mozzarella is better since it’s cheese made from buffalo milk or halloumi made from sheep and/or goat milk.

Also, radishes goes well with microgreens and microgreen salads.

Radish Salad - No Raw Bitter Taste

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

salad mix bag
3 large radishes, frozen in freezer and then brought to fridge/room temperature to soften. Add more if you prefer
1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup goat cheese crumbles
1 tbsp chopped bell peppers or sweet pimento peppers
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Share this

Healthy Mediterranean Foods – inspired by restaurant notes

Healthy Mediterranean foods is my world and a healthy diet way as in what you eat.

Off and on my hospitality career, I worked behind-the-scenes in food catering planning and event management for Spanish, Italian, and Lebanese restaurants and fine hotels in the Washington, DC area… a foodie hub.

During that time, I picked up many great healthy Mediterranean foods inspirations and also visited Italy and Spain.

Some of my fondest food event memories were the large corporate and bridal events that started out in my hotel days and then in restaurants.

And where I could be table setting pops of color with the festive food dishes. …I know where my today-brunch table roots came from.

In alignment, I was also co-hosting brunches in some of the foodie-st restaurants near the ones I represented and worked in… like Jose Andres’ fun DC restaurants and many American farm-t0-table ones that stand out.

From all those experiences, I learned to create balanced menus for preferred and customized tastes around specific seasons, daily occasions, and special events.

I got to make input and taste-test delicious foods, recipes, and dishes. With the Spanish, Italian, and Lebanese chefs, I was thankful they were much easier to work with than the ones that came from Ritz Carlton type-hotels (that give chefs their edge and what-you’d-expect in a chef fiery reputation 😊).

Today, the Spanish and Italian chefs stick out for me.

…Which btw, Spanish and Italian cuisines are having a moment (yes?) with Stanley Tucci’s Tucci in Italy and Eva Longoria’s Searching for Spain.

Have you seen?

They’re great for sparking food travel. If only you and I had smell-o-vision… 💭

But without, those countries had some of my favorite inspired healthy Mediterranean food dishes that can be prepared and made at home.

For starters, these are 3 healthy Mediterranean recipes soups and salads that also help to balance Vata and especially tame Pitta imbalances that are common in hot months.

One of my favorite plates was the fresh watermelon feta salad that many people love around the world.

Salt and watermelon are great pairings because the coarse salt stops the juicy in watermelon and gives a nice balance.

Salt added here is a lot like when you add a coriander seed and you bite into one and you get a strong burst of favorable flavor.

And when you add mint, you get a super-refreshing salad. Cooling mint added to juicy-ripe summer watermelon with salt and then finished off with a drizzle of balanced olive oil is a balanced salad or dessert. 🍉

Watermelon Mint Salad

Course Salad

Cuisine American, Mediterranean

Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Ingredients

fresh watermelon cut
olive oil
fresh mint
coarse sea salt
goat cheese crumbles (optional)

Instructions

Drizzle olive oil over watermelon
Add coarse sea salt
Generously add mint to watermelon

Feta cheese is often added but I prefer a sweeter goat cheese crumble that’s less salty. That way you get an overall sweet taste. Or you can add a dollop of Greek yogurt that’s more creamy like an Icelandic yogurt.

You could serve with lightly toasted pita chips where you can also make your own easy pita bread chips.

Spanish food dishes:

Planning parties and marketing at a Spanish restaurant chain called La Tasca allowed me to experiment with many Spanish food tastes and healthy Mediterranean foods.

The menu was full of variety… and never-ending like a Cheesecake Factory menu.

And in the Spanish restaurant version, one of my faves was a seasonal freshly-prepared gazpacho soup that traditionally is served cold and without tomato overpowering as the base.

But I like the sweetness of tomatoes that are abundant in hot temps when you want a cold soup.

So for this gazpacho, the blend I like is: blended watermelon (or cucumber if watermelon isn’t available), fresh diced tomato, cumin (that’s also cooling), and a drizzle of olive oil and garlic.

There’s enough water in watermelon to make a soup.

Minced pimiento sweet peppers are also great to add. They’re anti-inflammatory healthy and the bright fire engine red is striking. 🌶️

No heat in this gazpacho!

Then I like to add balancing fresh cilantro and salt & pepper.

…I remember ingredients used to always end with “salt and pepper to taste” and somehow that got dropped, maybe ‘cause of all the other great ingredients that we have access to.

I think S&P still are the two that often are the final balancing flavors if you can’t quite put your finger on what’s missing. 🧂

Coarser kosher or sea salts are star ingredients for certain healthy dishes, like a gazpacho, Brussels sprouts, edamame, watermelon salad, and pasta water.

Btw, Brussels sprouts are actually named after Belgium’s capital, Brussels. So that’s how you can also remember.

Food is simple in that the name often gives its origin away, but is complex because you don’t know what’s inside until you’ve had a taste.

And a gazpacho is one taste you can’t forget and named after “soaked bread” from Andalusia… I love how that region name (An-da-loo-see-ah) just rolls off the tongue like interesting music notes.

Traditionally, a gazpacho is served with a spongy white, unsalted bread that doesn’t have much taste (like Wonder Bread you would feed the ducks with at a lake 😊).

…This also reminds me of the bread served at Tuscan meals and with my favorite Ribollita soup served warm and great for wet and cool days (in early spring, late fall, or winter)… or if you’re feeling a bit over-Vata and need some comforting balance food.

You can also try a gazpacho inside a bread bowl.

Italian food dishes:

I started working in restaurants in my teens. The first one with servers was an upscale all-marble floor Italian restaurant chain. There I got in the habit of dipping bread in olive oil with cracked black pepper.

This was before that was common to do in restaurants.

The bread was served by a server who came around with black pepper mills who asked if you wanted to have fresh black pepper in your dipping olive oil and on your entree when it was served.

Serving butter with bread before and during the meal was still the American restaurant norm those days. Not olive oil.

The restaurant I worked in also had the first cappuccino machines in America (…those were exciting times!).

I wasn’t a coffee drinker then but I thought the machine was so cool and I was happy to make the drink!

Funny how these little Mediterranean healthy foods and drink (olive oil and cappuccino) intros stuck… many American restaurants customarily serve bread with olive oil because of these Mediterranean-influenced restaurants.

And we know what happened with cappuccinos as they’re everywhere.

And it was that restaurant experience where I also came to love this salad plate 🥗 (and you may too!):

Tomato Mozzarella Basil Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette. It’s a work of food art with balsamic vinaigrette dotted around the plate for each bite (like a paint palette… “a little dab will do you.”).

In summer, tomatoes on the vine are abundant and if you grow tomatoes, you may not know what to do with all of them.

Besides making a pasta sauce or gazpacho, a shrimp cocktail sauce is an idea. And salads of course!

Plum or Roma tomatoes are great for most salad recipes. They don’t squirt everywhere and they have a strong taste, unlike tomatoes for burgers.

San Marzano tomatoes were common in Italian restaurants and are now the rage in home cooking…

And so are heirloom tomatoes (organic). The tri-color yellow, purple, with orange give a visual pop of color too!

Also green tomatoes that aren’t as common anymore.

And for a tomato mozzarella salad, all tomatoes will work.

Then ontop of the tomatoes, add some sliced buffalo mozzarella cheese that’s the star of this recipe.

Buffalo mozzarella (white color) on its own doesn’t have much of a flavor, but paired with these ingredients… is scrumptious and anything but mild.

Sometimes people who have dairy sensitivities can eat this kind of cheese from buffalo.

Ontop the cheese, don’t forget the fresh basil and it’ll look like an Italian flag.

And for the zhugh? Pine nuts were popular and people who have tree nut allergies can sometimes eat the nut that comes from pines.

If you toast them, be sure to watch them as they can burn quickly.

Today, you can also sub in walnuts or sunflower seeds if you like.

So that’s it for this week. Good Eats, Buono Apetito, and Bon Appetit!

Hope you like that culinary healthy Mediterranean foods trio! 🥗

Share this

Busy Decision Made Easy – Get Unstuck!

Busy doesn’t have to be your life if you want to get unstuck this season. And this 7-and-a half minute article has notes about how you can declutter busy in your life (and get more of the authentic best life you’re meant to wisely live!).

I know both ways well because busy is something I grew up aspiring to. A BUSY LIFE was my purpose like a busy bee going from flower to flower.

Busy as a busy bee in this pink garden flower.

…when I grew up and lived in the busy DC metro area culture where everyone working is busy. Having busy plans on-and-off work meant you were important in some way.

…And not being busy meant you didn’t have a life.

I thought busy was a great word, and lived busy up into my 30s.

Today, busy is a “b” as in bad word now to me years in.

But lemme quickly tell you how I got there…

I simply buzzed away from the busy bees in the DC metro area I grew up in for starters… 🐝

Before that, busy was a charm bracelet I wore. It also meant complicating life by adding more and more. Accumulating is a deeper concept that accumulates, taking up space in life (and adds to or creates Kapha imbalances).

The opposite of a simple life sounded so boring.

And where I’m from, you can simply say “I’ve been busy” and you won’t get questioned.

The answer of being busy often got the equivalent of a smiling thumbs up. 👍

On top of those attitudes, being stood up is and was rude, but it was (and probably still is) accepted and common in acting 20 year olds.

Because unless the person you’re interacting with is related to you or lives with you, they’re too busy to listen if they don’t have to. That’s part of the busy culture air.

Souls aren’t looking for deep conversations about the soul, ha!

What’s your dark knight of the soul? as the person walks away and I’m standing by myself.

…I laugh because those are my favorite types of conversations now. 😊

And gradually as I became more interested in personal growth (and grew less busy), I saw being busy from the lens of being an excuse.

That’s what happens when you fill up breathing in living an authentic life and prioritizing inner peace (that’s now occupying your inner space).

…Compare that to wanting to just come out unscathed from this life living on the surface, like during my lowest seasons where I also dreamed of external-only happy desires.

Digging myself out of this way, I carved out big chunks of the day to be free, silent and listening to my thoughts, immersed in relaxing hobbies, writing, reading, writing some more, and just being at-peace, happy-joyful, and balanced.

No meditation except getting input and ideas from initiated prayer and memories from experiences, books, and others’ useful words.

And I’ll even go out on a limb and say, certain types of meditation as I know it are just another way to be busy… you know after a while of doing if it’s sucking life out of you (not giving back) OR if it’s life-giving and you can’t do without. Amen?

For me, one meditation way that works is getting in the zone of creative free-flow writing.

That I did very little of if at all in my corporate headspace days when I operated at my lowest vibration, but what I was doing looked good on paper and to the people I grew up with and was mostly around.

Gradually in my new slower paced life, I developed personal growth through building up character traits that aligned with the fruit of the spirit if you’re familiar.

Mainly: faith, patience, self-control, and peace.

These are deeper traits I never improved before (and were actually made worse in my former culture that modeled the opposite by outward actions).

And I had to go out of my way to seek those things and let them penetrate.

So then I had a new mark of success as personal growth (over external and corporate role accomplishments that used to be the primary mark).

To help unravel the busy life damage I soaked in, one step I took was I stopped filling up a calendar (that my earlier-hospitality event managing planner lifestyle approved and cozied up with).

I now like the look of a blank white calendar with a few fun stickers.😀

And today a nearly blank calendar is how I clearly see if I should add or skip an event… and then I decide.

And how I decide is based on the principle of GIVE and GET that I think is helpful for you if you want clarity in your life… and especially if you’re stuck.

And in this case use, it’s give OR get.

It goes like this…

If you’re giving something like teaching, encouraging, supporting, helping, mentoring, presenting, volunteering your time or donating money, then you have good reason to take time out of your day to be in that event headspace and with those people. It’s worth considering to put on your calendar.

…OR if you’re getting something out of an event like building connections, learning something new, supporting someone else, or getting yourself into happy moods by being somewhere else, then those are all good reasons to carve out time on your schedule.

But if not primarily going in and doing it for a Giving or Getting reason…

Then you’re allowing your drifting subconscious mind (that often influences and decides 😊)… to be confused and wonder if you need to be at the event… or questioning other people and their behaviors or way of dress, and not focusing on what they’re teaching or saying…

And if we’re judging others or having negative thoughts or feelings about being there, then it’s best to catch that and exit gracefully when you can.

Move on and enjoy the sunshine where you feel good.

Get back your hours and move in the direction of where you want to go.

When you were younger, you couldn’t do that or you would be going against approval of some form.

And now you’re an adult who chooses…

Re-learning and setting new habits around the idea that what is good for others isn’t good for you… and taking action based on that wisdom saves you time and going down rabbit holes.

So when you determine if you’re giving or getting in a situation, that makes it Black-And-White easy to decide if you should add more of that busy to your calendar.

…So it’s clear all around.

But then there are exploratory busy time-taking areas that are Gray.

And these can be good (or GRAY-T) opportunities for growth.

For example, sometimes we sign up for things because our gut told us to and we’re unsure why… yet.

Because of unknown future and unlimited possibilities, you want to keep yourself open and sometimes intentionally busy yourself there to investigate… temporarily making yourself out-of-pocket for routine or something else.

So we go there to this new place to learn… and to check and figure it out.

…And when we’re there, sometimes we discover we’re not yet aligned with the message there… where we’re here and that’s there, but the seeds have been planted (by going to learn).

After the event, we may even think: that was a waste of time.

But it wasn’t because our soul (mind, will, emotions) and wise spirit (wired to the Universe) knew better than us… we just hadn’t caught up and weren’t ready yet.

And one day that boomerangs back to us in alignment when we have clarity and remember the experience and learning.

Leaning in and taking a reflective pause helps you investigate what’s best for your life and gives better discernment as to what to do next.

By choosing to NOT take action always, you gain clarity in the step back that’s also action.

And if you miss a specific space, place, or people you visited before to learn and meet with, then that could be a reason to go back to invite in more of those event occasions again.

You’ll know soon enough if you read your tea leaves right or if it was a false return to open you up for something new and different that’s your next pursuit… and not just a busy one.

That’s how we’re wired to do this life and figure out what’s BEST for us in the moment.

And using the GIVE or GET simple decision trick helps that.

Staying productive for a life of success is a balancing dance act of giving, getting, and enjoying.

It puts us at the higher energy level to bring in bigger and better, and less busy filler things… and higher leads to your fulfilling calling, purposes, and destiny. 🧡

Share this