“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.”

— Mohandas K. Gandhi

Researchers now know that our negative beliefs are the source of much of our stress. This is because our beliefs, both negative and positive, literally shape our experience of the world.

Here’s how it works. Our beliefs shape our self-talk, which in turn shapes our sense of self, which eventually shapes the quality of our life.

If you change your beliefs, you can change your self-talk. Change your self-talk and you can change your life experience.

One way to change your beliefs is to first discover what they are by tuning in and learning what it is that you are constantly saying to yourself through your self-talk. I know this may sound a bit circular, but stay with me. It gets easier.

Your self-talk, as the name implies, is the internal conversation that you have with yourself. It’s that on-going, ever-present background monologue in your head. Some of your self-talk is positive and supportive; some of it is negative and self-limiting.

When your “positive voice” is uppermost, you naturally tend to feel confident and capable. That’s when you feel good about yourself and, not surprisingly, that’s when good things start to happen … quite frequently.

But when your “negative voice” (sometimes referred to as your “inner critic”) takes charge, you tend to feel insecure and inept. And then, through the Law of Attraction, you are more inclined to magnetize yourself to some “negative” experiences.

The research on self-talk began about 40 years ago. According to psychologists, our self-talk starts in childhood. Since children are new to the world and have yet to discover their relationship to it, they rely heavily on what their parents, siblings, friends, and teachers believe and say. This is how children primarily form their own basic beliefs about the world and themselves. (Children are also greatly influenced by what they watch on television. Yikes!)

For example, a child whose family struggles financially is likely to have beliefs about money that are quite different from a child whose family is financially secure. Each child then takes those beliefs into adulthood, and those beliefs form the basis for their self-talk. So the on-going, unconscious self-talk of an adult who came from a financially struggling family is more likely to be, “I can’t afford it”, or “I don’t need the fancy one. I’ll just take this less expensive one.”

But here’s the really scary part … our childhood self-talk is likely to continue into adulthood, unconsciously in the background, regardless of our current circumstances. That means that even if the child from the poorer family becomes more financially secure him or herself in later years, their self-talk is still apt to keep them in a state of belief that it could all fade away at any given moment. They will generally have this gnawing feeling that they are still financially insecure, even though their checkbook states otherwise.

The first step toward changing your self-talk, and ultimately your beliefs, is to become aware of its existence in the first place. If you aren’t aware of your self-talk, it’s easy to let your actions be guided and controlled by that inner voice because you probably don’t even realize that you have other options. So start today by becoming aware of your own self-talk … the conversations you have all the time with yourself in your own mind.

Awareness is always the first step toward any type of self improvement. Once you become aware of your self-talk, you can begin to take charge and shape it.

There are many ways to do this. Meditation is probably the best. Meditation will help you to observe the self-talk from the detached position of a neutral “observer” or “witness”.

As you get a little more separation between your habitual, unconscious self-talk and who you really are from the perspective of a neutral “witness” who is calmly and patiently observing your life along with all its ebbs and flows, then you are not so much at “the effect” of the events and circumstances of life.

That’s when you’ll start to realize that there is wholeness, and innate wholesomeness, to your life … and to you! You’ll also start to realize that the seemingly “negative” events of your life are simply transitory occurrences within an otherwise extraordinary life that is unfolding for you.

And when you realize that, then you are on your way to becoming the master of your own experience. And incidentally, that’s when you’ll start to truly reduce the stress in your life.

By Troy Rampy, Editor, The Wellness Blog™

“ We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

This particular stress reduction strategy is a little gem. Even for those of you who feel you don’t particularly care about or are not affected by your environment, beauty does exert its own power and energy.

Not sure you believe that? Okay, here’s a simple example: notice how you feel when you walk into a room where everything is clean, orderly and artfully arranged, as opposed to a room where there is chaos and clutter.

You will probably notice that you brighten up in the cleaner room. Chaos and clutter have a way of dampening our spirits … and of causing a continual, low level of background stress.

When things are brought into order of a certain kind … sometimes referred to as beauty … you tend to feel better. That’s because there is something in us that relaxes and appreciates beauty. We literally open up. Stress falls away and life improves a bit, along with our experience of it.

Beauty, in all its manifestations, has the power to transform and improve our lives … not to mention reducing our levels of stress! 

So here are a few simple things you can do to incorporate more beauty into your life. First and foremost for many of us is to clean up the mess and organize your environment. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much difference this makes.

Then, bring in some art, color, light, plants and/or flowers, in other words a sense of artistic design, for the places you spend most of your time … that is your living and working environments.

(Note: A lot of contemporary “art” is fragmented, cynical and jarring.  It accurately reflects the dysfunction and neurosis of our chaotic culture. So it’s not going to reduce your stress. In fact, it’s likely to do just the opposite. Be sure that the art you choose is something you truly like and uplifts you.)

In terms of your lifestyle, spend more time delighting in the things you enjoy whether that is good music, poetry, dance, film, theater, fine dining, or anything else of beauty that feeds your soul.

Find grace and beauty in the way you move, relate, talk, and live. Start with the small things, like enjoying a quiet morning cup of tea outside in the garden, especially now that the weather is nice (here in northern California, anyway).

Take time to meditate, eat healthy food, drink plenty of purified water, exercise, and get enough restful sleep. Yes, those five pillars of a well-being lifestyle are also expressions of beauty — the beauty, and integrity, of a life well lived.

Look for and acknowledge the beauty in others, in nature, and all around you every day. This may seem too simple to matter, but soon you might begin to notice that you just feel better, have more energy … and feel less stressed!

Oh the joys that beauty brings.

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”     — Norman Cousins

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog entry. A sincere thank you to those of you who noticed, and especially to those of you who contacted me with your concern.

This has been a year of loss for me. Three months ago it was my father-in-law, Paul Robert Molinari. Last month it was my father, James Troy Rampy, who would have been 90-years-old today. And three days ago it was my uncle, Aubrey Gene Rampy, who was 12 years younger than my father. An entire layer of my family’s masculine energy, role models, and leadership, gone.

I haven’t written anything since mid-March. Partly that’s about not knowing what I wanted to say … partly it’s about wondering if there was anything at all I had that was worth saying.

But here I am, writing. The problem is, I’m still not sure entirely what it is I want to say.

Allow me to simply begin by stating the obvious: there’s something about death that puts us, and our lives, into a much clearer focus. It brings with it a visceral sense of gravitas. It makes things ever so much more real.

I remember reading years ago in several of Carlos Castaneda’s books that Don Juan often mentored Carlos about living with the awareness of death … just over his left shoulder. That’s very much like the Buddhist precept of living daily with the awareness of death, of your own mortality, of your impermanence.

When we are younger, we live as if we are bullet-proof … immortal. Then as we grow older, we slowly become more aware of our own transient state. And generally with that awareness is the realization that we have a fixed amount of time.  So it becomes more imperative that we get on with our lives, with our intentions, with our goals, with our purpose.

In my various career paths as a writer, producer, group facilitator, and entrepreneur, I’ve always thought that my own life’s purpose was related to how I was helping, or instructing, or guiding others. But these past few weeks have plunged me into the awareness that what I really need to do now is to simply face myself … to inhabit my own body in the present as if my very life depends on it.

And you know what? It does.

Most of us live our lives focused on others. We experience life second-hand, vicariously through them. That’s why in this culture we have so much attention on, and craziness about, celebrities. They become our cultural avatars, our game pieces, our cyber-selves.

Or we live our lives focused on “someday” … some mythic future time when we think it might all come together.

My father’s death is still not entirely real to me … I haven’t totally let it in. That’s probably because I’m not ready to let in all the feelings connected with his passing.

But one thing is certain. He is no longer with us … not on this plane anyway. And now the baton passes to me, and my brother, and my male cousins … the next generation of my family’s masculine energy.

“Chemicals, n:  Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.”  ~Author Unknown

The debate as whether to buy organic versus non-organic food really seems to come down to finances: how much can you afford … as opposed to how much can you afford not to do?

It may be a more important issue than many of us realize. According to noted holistic health expert Andrew Weil, MD, “Eating fresh produce is the best way to obtain daily nutrients, but the pesticides used on many crops remain a major health concern. By choosing organic foods, you can reap the health benefits of fruits and vegetables without exposing yourself to potentially harmful chemicals.”

How to do that within the confines of an average food budget is the question. So here’s an easy way to nurture your body as you continue to nurture your pocket book. The Environmental Working Group, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization based in Washington, DC, has put together the following two lists based on extensive research into which produce is most likely to contain harmful pesticide residues.

While a good rule of thumb is to try to buy organic as often as possible, you can use these two lists to help determine your produce purchasing habits:

The Dirty Dozen (Whenever possible, buy these organic.)

• Peaches
• Apples
• Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Nectarines
• Strawberries
• Cherries
• Kale
• Lettuce
• Grapes (Imported)
• Carrots
• Pears

The Clean 15 ( Better organic, but generally okay if not.)

• Onions
• Avocados
• Sweet Corn
• Pineapples
• Mangoes
• Asparagus
• Sweet Peas
• Kiwi
• Cabbage
• Eggplant
• Papayas
• Watermelon
• Broccoli
• Tomatoes
• Sweet Potatoes

As someone recently said, “If organic farming is the natural way, shouldn’t organic produce just be called ‘produce’ and make the pesticide-laden stuff take the burden of an adjective?”

And here is what everyone’s favorite actress, Meryl Streep, has to say about this subject: “It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician.”

“The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.”     —  Arthur Schopenhauer

Yesterday I had one of those small epiphanies that happen on occasion to shock us out of our complacency. I was online and ran across the original “We Are the World” music video that three performing artists … Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, and Michael Jackson … orchestrated 25 years ago as a fund raiser for African famine relief.

There they were, all those musical super stars sharing that wonderful Grammy and American Music Award-winning song, singing their hearts out: Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, Tina Turner, Kenny Rogers, Kenny Loggins, Bruce Springsteen … even Bob Dylan … and about 20 more.

You’d recognize all of them. They were the musical luminaries of their time. They had come together in this heady, heartstrings-pulling summit of outreach and beneficent giving. As I watched, the tears began to roll down my cheeks. And all was right in the world. I wanted to write a check, right then and there, and send it in … 25 years after the fact!

But then, in the media-rich culture that is our contemporary YouTube labyrinth to navigate, I pulled up a “related video”. It was the recent, 25-year-anniversary remake and fundraiser for Haiti, also produced by Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones. (But alas, poor Michael … we knew him well … or did we?)

At any rate, here was the same concept, the same song, and same intent: lots of musical luminaries brought together for a good cause. This time, there was Barbra Streisand. And then there was … well, Barbra Streisand. And of course … hmmmmm, Barbra. But who were all these other people? The sad fact was I only recognized four or five of the approximately 25 to 30 featured entertainers.

That’s when I realized that I was … I was … okay, I was “out of the loop”. Somewhere, during the past 25 years of being a father, running a business, facilitating groups, dealing with health and financial issues and aging parents, coping with the ups and downs of married life, and rooting for the American way of life through the various disappointments of Bill Clinton and the utter wasteland of George W. Bush … somewhere I had lost touch with the pulse of contemporary culture. My cultural orientation had become … irrelevant.

I don’t mind sharing with you that I have been in a bit of a daze ever since. You know, your classic B-movie: “Night of the Living Irrelevant”.  I am aghast. How did this happen? I’ve always been so … with it, clued in, culturally savvy. And now this.

I’m reminded of my parents and my in-laws waxing on about “their music” … the Big Band sound of the 1940s. How smug I was in listening to them. How patronizingly self-satisfied and sure of myself … in my place of righteousness and entitlement as a Boomer.

After all, wasn’t I part of the generation that had led the counterculture of the 1960s? You know, the counterculture … the social revolution … the one we thought would change everything. Long live the civil rights movement … and sexual freedom … and gender equality. Long live John Lennon … and “The Graduate” … and Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog”.

Today I talked with my son and we made a date for dinner tomorrow night. My 17-year-old is always freshly full of what’s happening now. I admit, I could use a fix. If nothing else, I just want to be with him in his unabashed joie de vivie and catch up with what’s happening in his life.

But okay, enough of all that. It’s getting toward the end of February. It’s time to do my taxes. Yesterday was garbage day … I put out the recycle and the garbage. (Is this the “chop wood, carry water” of our times?)

And so it goes in post-revolutionary midlife …

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”  — Helen Keller

Several years ago, I was describing to an associate how discouraged I was regarding a particular project. It seemed to be dead in the water … but I couldn’t quite let go of it. Nor could I figure out how to resuscitate it. I was frustrated.

My friend, who was a psychotherapist, pointed out that I was a bit more than frustrated. In fact, I was displaying several symptoms of outright depression.

And so it is. Depression sometimes has a way of creeping up on us. We can be held captive in its icy grip and not even know it. But hey, so what? Whatever label we put on it, we are still right where we are. Correct?

Well, yes that’s true. But I’ve found that it’s generally helpful to have some understanding of what’s going on. It almost always gives me a clearer sense of direction and purpose. In this case, once I realized I was depressed, and accepted it … after a few more rounds of robust denial … I at least knew where to start looking for help.

I ultimately let go of the project and moved on. Doing that opened up a lot more room for new possibilities. As my sense of futility morphed into one of new found optimism via my movement and change, the black clouds of depression lifted. Huzzah!

So here’s the important stuff. Remember that no one is totally immune … depression can affect anyone, anytime. According to current research, more than one in five Americans will experience some form of depression in their lifetime. Women appear to be twice as likely as men to suffer from it.

Depression is not caused by weakness of character. Nor can it be cured by an act of will, or by just “snapping out of it.”

If you are depressed, get help. There’s no reason to prolong your suffering. Even everyday, garden variety depression, and especially moderate to severe depression, can be debilitating and rob you of both the joy and meaning in your life.

Today’s gold standard for treating clinical depression involves cognitive psychotherapy in combination with medication and/or healing herbs (e.g., St. John’s Wart), and exercise. (”Clinical Depression” is the term used to denote a mental state that is beyond the bounds of “normal” grieving and/or the temporary mood swings that can be associated with life’s usual ups and downs.)

However, the best way to treat depression is by preventing it in the first place. There are a number of ways you can prevent depression. Here are a few of the easiest and, as the gods of wellness would have it, the most effective:

• Eat well. Low blood sugar can make you more susceptible to mood swings. To keep your blood sugar level from dropping too low, eat smaller meals and eat more often. In addition, eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, your intake of sugar, caffeine and alcohol. These three can dramatically affect blood sugar levels.
• Meditate. Meditation has proven to be extremely effective in helping reduce depression by directly affecting your mood and outlook.
• Exercise. Exercise releases endorphins, which are nature’s “feel good” elixirs. Extensive research has shown over and over that exercise is particularly helpful in relieving depression.
• Get enough sleep. When you get a good night’s sleep, and the reticular activating system is priming your emotional brain properly, your norepinephrine and dopamine infusions create a positive, energetic ‘background music’…. Without these elements you more easily can become depressed.
• Review your primary values and life goals. Be sure you’re living your life consistent with your core values and your life goals. If you’re not, this can be a cause for depression. For some quick and easy tips regarding how to do this, click here.
• Engage in play, pleasure, and laughter. These three elements are a balm for rejuvenating your mood, your outlook, and your very soul. They release endorphins and bring you into the present, leaving you feeling lighter and revitalized. Especially now … in this culture, at this time.
• Raise your personal vibration. There’s a lot of new research indicating that by raising your vibration you can directly improve many aspects of your life, including your mood and outlook. To learn more about what that means and how to do it, click here.

FYI: The researched information in today’s blog posting, and much more, is available through the 52 weekly emails contained in our popular Wellness Wednesdays™ stress reduction online coaching program. To learn more about it, click here.

I’m happy to announce that Wellness Wednesdays™ soon will be available in a handy eBook version as well. If you’re interested in learning more about that, let us know and we’ll send you additional information.

As we begin this new year, many of us will sit down to consider what it is we want to attract to ourselves and manifest in the coming 12 months. Typically we will consider the key areas of our life such as health and well-being, relationships, family, personal and spiritual growth, finances and career, home, travel, recreation, social life, and others.

Hopefully we’ll take time to identify our personal goals within each of those categories, then set target dates for achieving them, and delineate specific steps to help insure positive outcomes. This is a good way, in my experience, to begin a fulfilling year.

But I think the step that many of us miss is to first determine what true happiness is, then use our personal definition as a talisman for determining our goals. Otherwise, we may find ourselves proceeding willy-nilly toward peripheral or culturally influenced objectives that often leave us feeling empty and unsatisfied. And as poet William Stafford warns, “… following the wrong god home we may miss our star”.

So let’s take a moment to consider the question, “What is true happiness”?

Okay, of course you have a sense of what happiness is. It’s one of those things like good art: not easy to define but you know it when you see it. But I think it’s helpful to try to wrap our thoughts and feelings around some kind of definition, or at least a description. That way, we’re more likely to know exactly what it is we want. To get us started, here’s my own drive-by attempt at describing happiness …

When I was young, I used to look only outside myself for happiness. Back then, it came in the form of a new friend, a good grade, or a favorite song. In my early ’20s, happiness was my ’66 white Ford Mustang with “four on the floor” and a broad blue competition stripe at the bottom. Then it was the former high school cheerleader who became an airline stewardess and stole my heart. But when she left, it took me 17 years to get over the hurt.

Happiness has also appeared as a big, vanillin, butterscotch-flavored Chardonnay or a deeply rich, bramble berry Zinfandel. It has come as the feel of wind and spray in my face while navigating a sailboat between the islands of Greece. I’ve felt happy eating an apricot, facilitating a meaningful workshop or group, writing a coherent blog post, and watching “Shakespeare in Love” for the fifth time, “Groundhog Day” for the seventh, “The Graduate” for the ninth, or “The Godfather” for more times than I care to remember.

I’ve experienced an overwhelming sense of happiness at the birth of each of my children. For over 20 years my happiness mostly has been about being their father. Ariana and Adrian are two of my most favorite and beloved people. What an honor and joy it is to be their father!

Happiness for me has sometimes been about big things like excellence and potential realized. Often it’s about the small things: my towels being clean and folded neat, all with the stripe on the right-hand side (I know … it’s a little OCD); my steak coming off the grill rare and juicy; finally having the ornaments that I like on the Christmas tree.

But when I consider the happiness that is within me, that which is mine regardless of the circumstances of my life, then I feel I am still learning. It’s a work in progress: sometimes I’m happy for absolutely no reason at all; sometimes it still takes some outside circumstance(s) to light up my heart.

Happiness, I think, is partly a state of mind, partly a felt sense in my body. It’s appreciating and wanting what I already have … while paradoxically still yearning for more and better. It’s feeling love for others, rather than trying to get others to love me. It’s about those rare times of silence and stillness when I so infrequently meditate. It’s about love, truth and beauty.

Yep, I guess it’s true. Mostly I think happiness is about love, for myself and others … and knowing that all is right and well in the world, even when I can’t see it.

So go ahead, take a shot at defining happiness for yourself. Then, with that information in mind, identify the goals that are most likely to create and/or embellish happiness in your life during this coming year so that you may indeed continue to follow your own star.

“Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.”        — Norman Cousins

Okay, so I have a tendency towards melancholy. Nothing clinical, mind you, just a wee bit on the serious side. My brother, on the other hand, loves to laugh … and play … and have fun. My children, too: they’re big into laughter.

And as it turns out, they’re all doing a lot more for themselves than simply having a good time. According to a recent study by doctors at Loma Linda University, laughter therapy reduced cholesterol levels and lowered inflammation in a group of diabetics with high blood pressure. (”Laughter Therapy”? I know, it sounds like an oxymoron. But bear with me.)

In a 2005 study at the University of Maryland’s Center for Preventive Cardiology, researchers also found that laughing reduces stress and improves heart functioning. Center director Michael Miller M.D. emphatically states, “We know that exercising, not smoking and eating foods low in saturated fat will reduce the risk of heart disease. Perhaps regular, hearty laughter should be added to the list.” It appears that laughter may indeed be the best medicine after all.

Norman Cousins, former editor of The Saturday Review turned wellness advocate, used laughter for his own healing. After being diagnosed with a life threatening illness, Cousins questioned the advice of Western allopathic medicine and instead developed his own recovery program incorporating megadoses of Vitamin C, together with a positive attitude, love, hope, faith, and especially laughter.

“He says he literally laughed himself back to health,” says health writer Cindie Leonard. “He immersed himself in only funny movies and television shows. He enjoyed every one of the Charlie Chaplin movies, and watched ‘Candid Camera’ episodes until his sides hurt, laughing. His illness disappeared. From this experience, he wrote an enlightening book, Anatomy of an Illness.”

What we already knew about laughter is that it’s free, readily available, and that it has no harmful side effects. But what we’re now learning is very exciting: laughter apparently alters our brain chemistry in positive ways, it reduces harmful stress hormones, cholesterol and depression, and it improves respiratory, circulatory and immune functions. Besides all that, it just flat out makes us feel better!

As renowned Harvard psychologist William James said nearly 100 years ago, “We don’t laugh because we’re happy — we’re happy because we laugh.” In other words, our habits — what we do on a regular basis — affect how we feel. While we all can relate to laughter, for some of us it’s a habit we can learn more about, or rather re-learn as adults. Especially now during the holidaze.

You can start today to incorporate laughter as a bigger part of your life. Here are a few simple things to do, suggested by laughter therapist Enda Junkins, LCSW.

• Wear a smile. It puts you closer to laughing. It also improves your attitude and outlook. (Try it. It works.)
• Laugh at least 5 minutes a day. Fake it until you make it.
• Learn to laugh at yourself and your life situation(s) more often. (Especially when you wouldn’t think to.)
• Practice telling more jokes and funny stories.
• Let go of being an adult all the time and give yourself permission to play more often.
• Bring laughter into your intimate relationship and lovemaking.
• Laugh out loud for no reason at all.
  
• Look for humor all around you–on signs, in people’s behavior, in the newspaper, the things others say, the crazy things that happen to you.
• Share your embarrassing moments with other people.
• Learn to play with things that are “serious” like work, social issues, money, etc. For example, use word play, silly songs, or develop a comical view of the issue at hand to help you laugh and cope.
• Laugh with other people when they laugh.
• Seek out entertainment that makes you laugh.
• Amuse yourself with your own sense of humor.
• Buy and listen daily to a tape of laughter, a laugh box, or a laughing toy.
• Cultivate your innate playfulness.
• Be creative with fun.
• Make sure you have fun. (This one’s really important.)
• Give yourself permission to laugh at anything you need to.
• Do at least one silly, non-conforming thing every day.

The evidence is clear: laughter is an important — and fun(!) — part of a well-being lifestyle. And it’s one of the few things you can do for yourself that actually nets instant benefits. So what are you waiting for?

Watch out Bro. I’m about to take the lead in having a good time … .

Several years ago, my family and I were on our way to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. We didn’t know that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the busiest traffic day of the year. Especially if you leave late in the day. And now we were learning about it the hard way, by adding our own stopped car to the parking lot that was normally I-80.

Given all the traffic, we hoped to make the usual three-and-one-half-hour trek from Grass Valley to Santa Clara in about five hours … or maybe six. Oh my. This was turning into a nightmare.

Then, just outside of downtown Sacramento, as we were taking an alternate route on I-5 south toward Stockton in an effort to avoid the traffic on I-80, things got worse. A lot worse. First, all the emergency dashboard indicators went red on my 10-year-old BMW. Then two telltale plumes of steam started to shoot out both sides of the hood. Luckily, we were approaching a freeway off-ramp.

Now, while luck may not be a word you’d think to use in relation to anything involving red emergency lights and steam, it was to become our talisman for rest of the day. Because something was about to happen that would change everything and would shape the events of the next few hours.

I can’t tell you exactly why, but my attitude and expectations inexplicably changed from “Oh, what a catastrophe” to “Oh, what an adventure”. I started to actually experience this entire event as high adventure! And I’m sure that my attitude and expectations, in some sort of Law of Attraction way, helped to create one of my family’s best ever Thanksgiving experiences …

I pulled off the exit and into a nearby parking lot just as a small crowd of young adults was coming out of an adjoining building. As I gingerly stepped out of my car and opened the hood, I heard a very excited “Woooaahhh!” from an animated young man who was leading a contingent of these young adults as he and I watched a big cloud of hissing steam gush out.

The young man and his friends were students at a school for the mentally disabled. They were done for the day and were headed for their Thanksgiving holiday. They were in a festive spirit and this was one of the funniest things they had seen all day: some middle-aged guy with clouds of steam billowing out from under the hood of his car.

My son Adrian, who was five at the time, didn’t know whether to be more entertained by his father’s dilemma or by this group of interested, and interesting, young people who were now swarming all around the car and were as equally interested in the live steam as they were with the occupants of the car. While my wife stayed in the car with the children, I went into the building with one of the students who introduced me to his teacher.

This teacher could not have been more helpful. He pulled out a local phone book and also offered a recommendation for a BMW mechanic he knew that might be willing to help us with our car … even now at three P.M. on this Wednesday before Thanksgiving!

I called the mechanic. He had a thick Eastern European accent and, once I described our car problem and our family-related plight, he said he would be willing to help … if we could get the car towed over within the hour.

The teacher once again came to my rescue by suggesting a local tow service. I called and the largest tow truck I’ve ever seen showed up within about 15 minutes. The driver carefully cranked my inoperative car onto the back of his huge, flatbed tow truck. As my wife, two children and I sat with the driver on the gargantuan front seat of his truck, he told us his story on the way to the mechanic’s shop. It turns out he was a graduate of UC Berkeley but was now driving this tow truck.

The mechanic was a BMW specialist. He immediately identified the problem — a blown water pump — and said that he happened to have in stock exactly the right replacement parts … hallelujah!

As we discussed the blown water pump, he also told us his story about coming from Europe and leaving behind friends and family. Then he said it would take about two hours to fix our car.

By this time, the four of us were getting hungry. As luck again would have it, we were just a couple miles from a friend’s favorite Japanese restaurant. So the mechanic called a taxi for us and we were on our way. En route to the restaurant, the taxi driver told us his story, including the fact that this was going to be his last day driving a cab before starting a new job the following Monday as a stock broker.

The meal was great and the same taxi driver returned to give us a ride back to the mechanic’s shop. Our car was ready. We gratefully, and profusely, thanked the mechanic and then continued on our otherwise normal journey.

That Thanksgiving was ever so much more meaningful to us. We were “lucky” to have met and shared stories with so many wonderful people. We felt we expanded our definition of family that day. And we were “lucky” to have had so many pieces fall easily into place.

All-in-all it was a lesson in living life as we secretly all know it can be lived. It really is about our attitude and expectations. And we really can live our life every day with exactly that kind of magic and synchronicity. Now that is something to truly be thankful for …

Studies show that money is one of the main causes of stress for many people. But then, most of us don’t need researchers to tell us that! Especially, not now.

Even though there are some tenuous indications that the recession may have bottomed out, most of us are still painfully aware of just how fragile our economy is and how painfully not in control we are. So really, what can we do?

Well, this past weekend I saw a production of The Music Man at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) in Ashland. Now all of a sudden I feel like breaking into song in response to my own question, “Trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in River City! With a capital ‘T’ that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for Pool.”

Yes, much like the song and Professor Hill who sings it in the play, there’s a bit of flim-flam about the whole topic of money. There’s always that sense of fear that we can easily go into regarding money. Oh we got trouble. We worry about it. We stress about it. Right here in River City. But all too often, we don’t take the steps that can bring us financial peace of mind. With a capital “T” that rhymes with “P” and that stands for … Peace of Mind!

Organizing and simplifying our finances goes a long way toward reducing our stress, improving the overall quality of our life, and providing peace of mind. Here are some easy things you can do to improve your financial peace of mind … starting today. And don’t be fooled. While all of these are relatively easy to do, they actually do work. You just have to implement them …

1. • Establish a budget. Yes, it’s true. Establishing and sticking to a realistic budget is the number one thing you can do to actually reduce financial stress in your life. This is not as difficult or odious as you might think. Just sit down with your checkbook and debit card and determine your primary, repeating expenses. Do a little math to find the difference between what you make and what you spend each month, and make the appropriate corrections. Voila!
   • Eliminate debt. Begin with your highest-interest debts first. Typically your home mortgage will be the last debt you eliminate because it’s so big. BTW: By adding even $50 to $100 each month to your mortgage payment, you will reduce the overall amount you pay by several thousand dollars and shorten the life of the mortgage.
   • Get rid of all but one of your credit cards. Use it for airline and hotel booking or prudent catalog buying. Try to make it a debit or airline mileage card. But if it’s an airline card, be sure to pay it off each month.
   • Focus on savings. There are two components to increasing your savings and net worth: increasing your income and reducing your expenses. Consider each purchase carefully. Do you really need it? Will it be just one more thing you have to maintain? If you do need it, get the best one. Remember: This is not about quantity, it’s about quality.
   • Consolidate your investments and checking accounts. Simpler is better, period.
   • Look into automatic bill paying. For people who maintain high balances in their checking accounts, this is a great time and energy saver — not to mention the postage stamps you save. But if you don’t maintain a sufficiently high balance in your checking account, automatic bill paying might cause more headaches — and expense in returned check charges — than it’s worth.
   • Restrict the number of your donations. Choose 1 or 2 charities that are especially meaningful to you, and focus all your giving on them.
   • Reevaluate extra expenses. Reevaluate how much you actually use your second home, boat, time-share, or camping trailer. If you can’t justify the expenses, sell them and bank and/or donate the money.

With a capital “T” that rhymes with “P” and that stands for … Peace of Mind!

“Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi