Your Sizzlin’ Summer Challenge begins TODAY!
Coincidentally, it’s also the Dalai Lama’s birthday.
10 weeks of great activities to get you out and about in your communities and with your loved ones awaits.
As we begin, we reflect on what’s ahead.
Health is really about our ability to enjoy life with those we love. This week we begin by asking you to take time to break bread together. If you can do so in the presence of peaceful nature, you’ll be catapulted on a healing trajectory that could last you right through another crazy winter!
That’s exactly what the Dalai Lama teaches: loving-kindness for all people in nature breeds compassion that stays with the mind forever. This memory keeps us healthy in hard times and helps dissipate destructive emotions like fear, anger and guilt.
And you thought we were just asking you to share some veggies and quinoa at the summer BBQ!
Well, that’s kind of true too. We’re definitely asking you to choose some fun, healthy foods that will make you say “YAY” to eating well. Beyond that, science is clear that doing so with loved ones, sharing joyful moments, will make you exponentially healthier. In fact, according to research in Positive Psychology, when you show compassion for someone else, your DNA actually changes! Your genetic, molecular structure shifts so you become better at fighting disease. This is remarkable news.
We used to believe the world was flat. We used to believe the brain stopped growing by age 25. We used to believe your genetic makeup was unchangeable from birth. The miracle of modern science shows, ironically, what we’ve always known… We need each other, and in being with each other in healthy ways, we are changed for the better, forever.
In a speech the Dalai Lama gave the day before his milestone birthday he reminded the world that we are all meant to be happy, that no one is comfortable in a state of anger and that compassion is a powerful path to intelligence, health and dignity. He reminded us all of the power of our brains to change to the world:
“I thank you for your good wishes for my birthday, but I like to think of every new day as like a birthday. It’s a day we celebrate with joy which is an indication the purpose of our lives is to be happy. When we combine our intelligence with warm-heartedness it can be useful and constructive.
Usually we seek pleasure through sensory experience, but whereas sensory experience of pleasing sights and sounds is fleeting, lasting only as long as the stimulus is present, our mental experience remains with us 24 hours a day. When the music we enjoy stops, our pleasure is only a memory. Since we have this marvelous brain, we need to pay more attention to our mental experience.”
Celebrate your time together, celebrate yummy healthy food, and celebrate life every day with joy! Like it’s your birthday.
Oh, and click here for a fun recipe for some yummy, healthy cookies from our friend Rachel Druckenmiller at Rachel’s Nourishing Kitchen.
Also, check out the Blue Zones Solutions for ideas on what the world’s longest living people eat regularly. If you want to live to 100 (and like it) these people have the key ingredients.
Good luck and enjoy the summer!