Monthly Archives: April 2012

HBT

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I know at least one friend is going to smile when she sees this topic. Her dad coined the term “HBT” or Horizontal By Ten. I know you all know this but I think it’s something we all need to be reminded of…including me. As Lance watches me doing circles around the bedroom (so patient, my man), he often wonders, “will she ever get in bed?!”

I can’t tell you what exactly I am doing but I often find myself diddle dallying and suddenly it’s 10:45 and I am annoyed at myself. It’s a constant balance for me and when I do succeed at getting HBT I feel so much better the next day because it is actually a fact, that almost ALL humans get a second wind after 10:30 at night. I’ve heard people say, “I just get so much energy at night.” Actually you are not alone. If you are staying up past 10:30, that’s pretty normal and makes it a lot harder to wind down. Also, research shows the sleep you get before midnight is actually your most restful sleep of the night. A night owl’s sleep is much less rejuvenating.

Instead of listing all the benefits of sleep, I wanted to tell you a story that I found particularly fascinating. A friend of mine has been dealing with arthritis for years and years. She has kept her head high but all of us have seen the inflammation and knew the pain she was in. She tried it all from western to eastern but relief wasn’t coming easily. The other day, we were talking about the importance of getting in bed early. This friend is a self proclaimed night owl. She said for the first time in her life she was really working on getting to bed earlier. What really amazed me was she said for the first time in 3 1/2 years she was symptom free. So I hope that is enough to express the importance of sleep and being horizontal by ten.

Zzzzzzzz,
Nancy

My morning cocktail

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I haven’t started drinking vodka in the morning…yet…but I have added this new cocktail to our repertoire and its my favorite new thing.

I make this drink before my meditation and before our green juice. It’s amazing and I’ll let you discover for yourself what comes out the other end…

Lemon/Chlorophyll/Aloe Vera juice

First of all Chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a powerful blood builder. Chlorophyll has the power to regenerate our bodies at the molecular and cellular level and is known to help cleanse the body, fight infection, help heal wounds, and promote the health of the circulatory, digestive, immune, and detoxification systems and it’s an anti-carcongenic. It’s also extremely alkalinizing.

We are WAY into Chlorophyll.

Now for Aloe Vera…It is a great boost for your overall immune system. It’s anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antiviral. Aloe helps promote the production of new healthy cells. You will be more energized and lots of people have actually claimed that since they started drinking Aloe Vera juice, they hardly get sick. Some studies have actually confirmed that Aloe can destroy cancer tumors. The polysaccharides in the plant are found to have anti-tumor properties.

We LOVE Aloe Vera..

So we combine them all together like this…(double this is you are making this for 2 people)
6 OZ of water
1 organic lemon (cut off ends, scrub lemon and then cut into 6-8 pieces (with the rind)
1 OZ Chlorophyll
1 OZ Aloe Vera Juice

Throw lemon and water in a blender (or vitamix if you have one) and blend it until it’s liquified.
Strain through a strainer.
Pour remaining lemon juice back into blender and then add the Chlorophyll and Aloe Vera Juice and mix them all together.

DRINK UP! (give yourself about 30-45 minutes before eating anything else).

You will feel amazing and energized and doing lots of wonderful things for your body!

The Story of Our Lives

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A friend of mine, Ryan, gave me this amazing book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, by Donald Miller. I encourage everyone to read it.

Million Miles is about what it’s like to edit down your life to the interesting parts. Donald wrote his memoir and in the process he had to cut out a lot of his life. If you write a memoir, hopefully you want people to read it. So it needs to be compelling. It needs to be a good STORY. That means all the boring stuff needs to come out. Editing your life. Yikes. What a strange experience deleting big parts of your life that people wouldn’t think is interesting.

What it led Don to realize was that we can write The Story of Our Life in the present and make our lives truly remarkable right now, not so people will want to read about it, but so we will live amazing lives.

There is a chapter early on in this book about Don listening to a friend (Jason), as his friend is telling him about the trouble he’s having with his teenage daughter. Jason and his wife found pot in her room. She was hanging out with the wrong crowd and the wrong guy. The whole thing was devastating to Jason and his wife.

So Don starts telling his friend about the concept of Story. Telling Jason about his experience editing his life story and realizing we can all create wonderful stories in our lives in the present moment. Then he said, “Your daughter is living a terrible story. She’s writing a story where there is risk and adventure with pot and crazy boyfriends” which made Jason realize he hadn’t mapped out a great story for his family so his daughter had chosen one for herself. The best story available to her.

Don’s friend kind of went a little crazy after that as most of us would define crazy. He did what I think is amazing. He took a $25,000 second mortgage out on their house (he definitely should have talked to his wife first!) and paid for an orphanage to be built in Mexico that they were also going to help build. It transformed the family. Jason had had the realization that not only was he not taking risks, but they weren’t helping anybody. His daughter was totally into it, wanted desperately to go to Mexico to take pictures of the orphanage and children to post on her website and inspire people back home to help. She dumped her boyfriend. Their lives changed dramatically for the better.

I am so inspired by how this dad changed the story of his family’s life and by how he saved his daughter. The chapter is called, “How Jason Saved His Family.”

This whole concept of story has made me think how Nan and I can change our story. Nan is thinking too. What can we do to give back? All of us can change the Story of Our Lives at any moment.  Why haven’t we built an orphanage? If we do something crazy soon at least you wont be surprised.

Love,
Lance