Personal and Environmental Wellness

I was onced asked to do an interview with a focus on what overworked and overstressed people could do to stay healthy. After giving it some thought, I decided not to do the interview because I didn't want to send the message that people can experience their best health by following a few tips on diet and lifestyle without regularly ensuring adequate physical and emotional rest.

If you are finding it difficult to overcome tendencies to experience fear and anxiety about a health condition or any other aspect of your life, I hope that you realize that you are not alone.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Unbreakable, a film by M. Night Shyamalan. What I love most about this film is its suggestion that if you are not doing what you are meant to be doing with your life, you will wake up each morning with a little sadness in your heart.

I realize that every person's life is made up of countless conscious and subconscious experiences, and that it can be self-limiting and even depressing to think that there's just one thing that each of us are meant to do really well.

Back when we had a whole-house water filter installed to remove chlorine and other undesirable chemicals from our water supply, the friendly technician who did the work was thoughtful enough to give me some tips on how to significantly reduce energy consumption.

Originally published on January 9, 2009, updated on September 28, 2009

Over the past couple of years, I've had dozens of people recommend The Secret, a popular self-help book on the law of attraction. I have yet to read this book, but my understanding is that "the secret" boils down to this: we should continuously focus our thoughts on everything we want in life, as we tend to manifest what we regularly think about.

Most people would probably agree with the idea that visualizing a desired outcome is just one important step to manifesting that outcome. Visualizing all day long and not taking action to realize one's hopes just doesn't inspire confidence, at least not for the masses.

Updated on July 3, 2009

Several years ago, I was fortunate to meet a lady named Deborah at a fasting clinic in northern California. I had several conversations with Deborah over the course of a year, and what I remember most is that her kindness was amazingly genuine - the feeling for me was that she had done a lot of inner work to identify the life principles that she strove to live by.

For the past several days, my wife Margaret and I have been going through our home, room by room, and de-cluttering like mad.

Though we've never been ones to accumulate a bunch of knick knacks or expensive toys, with two little boys demanding most of our attention over the past few years, we recently realized that a serious spring cleaning job was in order.

Updated on December 15, 2008

If you're wracking your brain to come up with ideas for gifts that can give for a lifetime, I hope that the following suggestions come in handy.

Gifts for Children

Updated on October 11, 2008.

After reading the responses to the article Should Parents Spank Their Children?, some of which support spanking, it occurred to me that perhaps many parents just don’t know how else to influence their children’s behaviour. Some parents feel that spanking is the best way to teach their children not to misbehave. Some parents feel that everything else has failed and so, having run out of other options, they turn to spanking. If you are a parent, especially one who would like to begin learning about alternatives to spanking, please consider the following points.

In February of 2008, we started a fund raising campaign for a special, not-for-profit organization called Operation Shanti. Located in Mysore, India, the folks who run Operation Shanti are dedicated to empowering the poorest and neediest children and elderly people in their area.

As reported in our first update following the launch of our campaign, our readers responded spectacularly, surpassing our goal within a week.