Love Letter to My Life #51: Everything dies, but seldom when we're ready

(We know the day we were born, but most of us do not know the day we will die. This love letter to my life is written on the day I've designated as my death day: the 17th of every month, and reminds me to be grateful for my joy-filled life. In  December, I get to celebrate both my birth and death days on the same day. Joyce Wycoff)   

    There’s something about having done 50 of these love letters that makes me wonder where I’ll be on #100 … assuming, of course, I make it that far. 49 months from now will put me at October 17, 2026, and safely into my 80s.  Not only is there a possibility that I won’t be here, there’s a probability that death will touch my life in the next four years, whether it be friends, acquaintances, the ultimate loss of whole species, or the multitudes that will be lost to climate disasters, famine, plague, war and other violence. Everything dies, but seldom when we’re ready.

    This week Yvon Chouinard and his family gifted Patagonia, valued at $3 Billion, to the earth. They resigned from the billionaire club and constructed an elaborate system which is estimated to yield approximately $100 million dollars per year to be used for fighting the environmental crisis and defending nature.

    Patagonia has contributed to this same cause for 50 years and has already contributed over $140 million to environmental conservation. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking, if the Chouinards can do that, what can I do? If we all rise to the Patagonia challenge of doing whatever we can, perhaps we can stop this slide into chaos.

    Today, I took a break from a long run of focused work and decided to “make something beautiful.” I started trying this and then that, and experimenting with a couple of Photoshop tricks. It was going well enough until the words “everything dies” registered in my brain and things started turning dark.

    An egret wandered into the picture early on. That wasn't surprising. I fell in love with egrets while in Ajijic and spent many late afternoons taking hundreds of photos of them reflected on the water, colored by the setting sun. They appeared in a lot of photos and paintings. Here are just a few:

Love is in the air

Egret Evening

Egret Dance

    However, today was different. Not at first, but gradually the image took on an ominous feel until I finally recognized it as The Last Egret. I know there will be a last egret for me, just as there will be a last everything. The particular one in this image was in Florida and now I see them at the lagoon near me. I don’t know when I will see the last one, but knowing that I will makes my heart ache. 

The Last Egret

   Knowing that there may come a day when every egret is gone is heart breaking. I don’t know what I can do to prevent or delay that day but Yvon Chouinard just convinced me that I can do something … I have to do something. I hope you … all of you ... find your own something.

Sweet Peace #39: Is Diabetes Reversible ... my 30-day low carb experiment

Poison Oak ... a recognized poison

Five years ago while I was in Mexico, a woman introduced me to Keto. She was a well-meaning woman who desperately wanted to be a healer, and maybe she was. However, her approach was not grounded in science and it didn’t take long for doubts to arise and the idea to fall aside.

Since then, I’ve taken on a bias of “it doesn’t work for me,” and latched onto every anti-Keto story, avoiding a whole lot of “it worked for me” stories. Five years pass and my blood sugar numbers are still in the slightly-high range, and nothing that I do seems to make a difference, including doing a 66-day sugar fast and continuing to maintain sugar as a rarity.

It seems as though my blood sugar has a mind of its own, and I’m beginning to believe age may be a contributing factor and that this just may be “it.” After all, diabetes is all over my maternal bloodline and my mother died in a nursing home with diabetic related dementia. As far as I know, my grandmother and most of my aunts also had this disease. One thing that came out of seeing my mother inject herself with insulin was that I started monitoring my own blood sugar almost 30 years ago. However, now it seems like I am being overtaken by the family disease.

Then I came across a snippet of a Dr. Peter Attia podcast with Dr. Sarah Hallberg, a researcher and practitioner focused on reversing diabetes. Everything she said made sense and gave me new hope. The following morning I woke up determined to find out more about Dr. Hallberg only to find out that she died a few months ago after years of battling stage-4 lung cancer.

For some reason, I felt real grief and took her loss personally. I spent most of the day watching her videos, including a gut-wrenching one made when she was given an award only a few weeks before she died. She was a pioneer and a champion of the possibility of reversing diabetes. Her research and other extensive research in this area all come to one conclusion: diabetes is a carbohydrate tolerance disorder.  Low carb diets can reverse diabetes and many of the other related diseases.

The bottomline of this is that I am now on a 30-day low carb challenge … basically following a Keto program … it only took five years to circle back to this point.

For any of you who are interested in finding out more about low carb and diabetes, here are the videos with Dr. Sarah that I recommend. And, fyi, I am using Carb Manager as the tracking app for this 30-day period. Today is Day 4.

This podcast with Dr. Hallberg and Dr. Attia contains a statistic that shocked me:

Over 50% of Americans are diabetic or pre-diabetic. And to make it worse, 88% of Americans are NOT in optimum metabolic health … that additional 38% could be considered pre- pre-diabetic. This is based on the 5 criteria for metabolic disease and anyone with 3 of the 5 would be classified in the 88%.  Here are the criteria that marks the presence of metabolic disease.

• Blood glucose over 100 
• Blood pressure over 130/80 
• HDL cholesterol UNDER 50 (women) 40 (men)
• Triglycerides over 150 (Drs. Hallberg and Attia recommend under 100)
• Waist circumference over 36” for women; and over 40” for men:

Dr. Sarah Hallberg TEDxPurdueU, 9 million views

And the gut-wrenching video that made me love and appreciate Dr. Sarah even more:

If anyone wants to join me on this 30-day challenge, email me at jwycoff at me dot com.

Sweet Peace #38: We humans are a curious lot

Grinding hole found in local park

It’s Tuesday. The calendar reminds me of my commitment to write a Sweet Peace post every Tuesday. However, this week it snuck up on me and I have no thoughts about what to write. We’re in the midst of a heat wave and my physical well-being is fried, boiled might be a better term since I’m in a limp-noodle state which feels neither sweet nor peaceful.

And then … and then Richard Branson sends me a note, asks me a question which tickles the feather of energy still floating through my being: 

“What words keep you centered 

and motivated when you wake up?”

I survey the empty parking lot of my mind and finally see a pebble in the far corner. I turn it over and written in tiny, almost illegible letters are the words: Everything is a gift! Almost involuntarily, I feel the lift of those words and decide to reply to Richard’s note, since he asked. There I find 666 comments already in place. No point adding my meager offering, I think.

Because the energy bucket is running on fumes, however, I follow the call of a shiny rabbit and begin to read the comments. Suddenly a world opens up, an interconnected, human world of pain and sorrow, success and defeat, generosity and crass opportunism.

After a ridiculous amount of time passes wandering in this rabbit hole, it suddenly dawns on me that Richard Branson, one of the most successful people on the planet, someone with 4.4 million subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter, is beloved by some, castigated by others, and never hears from the rest.

By the time I pulled myself out of this quagmire, there were 1,129 comments on Branson’s post … that is roughly .02% of his followers. Some appreciated his words, some wanted to tell their own stories, and some wanted his money or power. However, 99.98% of his followers never saw his post, didn’t read it, or … like me … didn’t bother to comment.

It is a lesson worth the off-track jaunt. I can only control the efforts I make, the way the world responds to my offerings is completely out of my hands. The world is a busy place with people trying to make their way through a tsunami of information. While they crave information that will help them on their journey through life, at the same time, they feel the pressure to run faster, skim the surface, try to grab the next bright bit. For information creators, dealing with this push/pull can be daunting.

Rather than doing nothing though, Branson sat down and wrote a few thoughts from his life that he thought might be inspirational to some people (and they are) and probably to also give himself the pleasure of reliving some of his path and honoring people who inspired and motivated him.

We never know what effect our words will have. Often, people receiving the words may also not know the effect of those words until some time in the future when the words come back at just the moment they're needed. While I thought Branson's words were motivational, what really inspired me was his taking the time to share them and the way he shared them without expectation of return. He offered his thoughts, saying, “For anyone in need of inspiration, I hope you find these phrases useful.” 

Even in my energy-challenged state, I feel a call to carry on, to continue sharing thoughts and words and hoping that some of them will take root like seeds on plowed ground. I also feel a renewed desire to carry on with this 52-week commitment to Sweet Peace, confident that there will always be new lessons on the journey.

You can find Branson's newsletter post at Ask Richard Newsletter. 

And, should you want a taste of the comments, here is the essence of some that caught my attention:

• A grieving woman wants to sue the vet for the death of her cat
• An older worker bemoans the difficulty of getting a decent job
• A father grieving his son, dead from COVID, and dealing with a world that seems cold and cruel
• One person shares:  if you don't ask, the answer is always no
• A candidate for the prime ministry of the UK asks Branson what he’s going to personally do about the state of the world, specifically climate change
• Another response solicits funds for a renewable energy project
• A man wants a job at Virgin
• An invitation for Richard to come to a remote place to tell his story.
• A man sends the first paragraph of the book he is writing
• An idea to help Richard make more profit
• A touching thank you to life
•  A parent says, "I may not be a business owner or have a prominent position in the organization that i work for, but at home I am valued more than anything and that is what motivates me."
• A guy explaining the “Theory of Everything” says, “Richard, if you keep an open mind, you will realize that this is the most important comment you've ever received.”
• For some reason, one guy thinks Richard Branson should invite him to Branson’s private island
• A request for funding for a series of Christian films
• A guy who has a proposal to save Ukraine, tells Branson, “I am your only salvation.” (All in caps) In an earlier comment, the same all-caps guy tells Branson “YOU HAVE FLET THE WRATH OF GOD.” And again, “YOU ARE A CON ARTIST ... I AM THE ONLY GUY THAT CAN SAVE ... VIRGIN GROUP.”
• A man with the tagline, “Making tomorrow’s future, today,” accuses Branson and the commenters of living on Planet Optimism and explains the “reality” of “greed conquering goodness and evil supplanting everything worthwhile and wholesome.”

There's more, but life calls me back to reality and the last whiff of energy just drifted away.

Sweet Peace #37: Codegas of Confidence

Rainbow Spiral

“In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega—a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert

Codega: Illuminator of the night. Bringer of light into dark places.

For those of us who are afraid of the dark, finding a codega seems like it would be a miracle, a blessing that would brings us confidence and courage. The monsters who lurk beyond the dark edges would be pushed back and we could walk strongly on through a path of light.

But I didn’t know about codegas until recently, and fear has been a constant companion even when seldom justified. Night, dark waters, strangers, unknown streets, crowds, lonely paths leading through unknown forests. Maybe it came from reading … things always go bad in books … or maybe it was part of my DNA, handed down from days of lions and tigers and bears … or perhaps from an angry family where I always felt alone and unsafe. I wanted a big brother to protect me, however, it’s hard for an only child to have a big brother.

Somewhere during my 20s, with a big brother-husband for protection, I began to recognize fear as my constant companion. Life offered me choices that demanded fear in payment. So, I studied courage; baby-stepped my way toward the bright baubles that lured me. Decades passed in a dance that zig-zagged toward a future that called, fear always pulling me back to a safe place before I struggled forward once again.

Eventually though, years of doing what scared me began to overpower fear. When my husband died fifteen years ago, I grew stronger about making choices in spite of niggling fears. I travelled by myself, lived in Mexico for two years, entered into and exited from relationships that weren't right, and moved often, trying on different situations. Fear was a reminder to examine situations, however, it was no longer calling the shots.

By my 70s, although I was well armed with the courage and confidence to make decisions about my life, there was one dark area that still stubbornly resisted my efforts: rejection related to my creative life: my writing and art. I’ve learned enough about art, and writing, to know that the judgment of it is subjective, with little predictability as to what will catch the public eye or what will become classic over time or fade into oblivion.

And, it shouldn’t matter because I can’t imagine life without writing or art. It’s as fundamental as food. However, both are a means of communication and sending writing or art into the world without someone receiving it, is a form of rejection. I was learning to live with this void … this rejection … imagining myself dying surrounded by a computer full of unseen art and writings and shelves of little books I’ve published for myself.

Available at GratitudeMojo.com

Then I began the Gratitude Mojo journal/workbook with Lynne Snead and things began to change. Lynne, in all ways the co-creator of this work, and Barbara Gaughen-Muller became my codegas, shining their light by reading and responding to the gradually developing workbook, being actively involved in its shaping. Their insights and encouragement shone a light that let me see a brighter path. It was like the three of us were skipping down the yellow brick road.

We’ve been on this path for over a year, and what I now feel sprouting is a confidence, a sudden willingness to risk rejection, to put this work out into the world, without expectations of success or financial reward. I have confidence that this is my best possible work … and what more can the world ask of me?

I am grateful to Lynne and Barbara for being my codegas of light. I also realize that other friends have each added their own light to my journey and, without them, this would have been a long, dark, and scary path.

If you would like to see a light-hearted overview of the Gratitude Mojo Path, click here.

And, all writings about gratitude, self-awareness, and self-appreciation will appear in the new newsletter GratitudeMojo.substack.com ... it's a free newsletter and you're invited to join the conversation.

Sweet Peace #36: Tips for more deep sleep

College kid prank: money glued to street

     I’m coming in under the wire on this one. A fun project held me hostage, a nap needed to be napped, and amazon delivered what I hope is a key to better sleep so it just had to be installed. So, it’s now 2-hours before bedtime and time to start taking eyes off the computer, so this is going to be quick.

Deep sleep is important. According to VeryWellMind.com, deep sleep is the third stage of non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep. Deep sleep is also known as slow-wave sleep. This is the stage of sleep where your brain waves are at their slowest. Your heartbeat and breathing also slow down.

More important than its definition is why it’s critical for our health. During this type of sleep, memories are reinforced and body tissues are repaired. This is when our bodies heal. Not getting enough deep sleep is related to several major diseases such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

I’ve been wearing a Fitbit for several years but paid little attention to the sleep metrics until recently when I started tracking deep sleep. Recommendations are that between 13 to 23% of our sleeping time should be deep sleep. So, if you sleep 8 hours per night on average, you should get about 62 minutes of deep sleep. After looking at my numbers, I’m not getting enough, so I went looking for ideas about how to improve my numbers.

Funny how almost everything has the same recommendation: eat healthy, exercise regularly, limit caffeine and alcohol. To be a little more specific: 

Exercise: Try to get 150 minutes of cardio exercise per week (thanks to my Fitbit, I’ve discovered that a brisk walk in the morning gives me more cardio minutes than the same walk in the afternoon). Intense exercise in the late afternoon or evening can actually interfere with sleep.

Caffeine: Avoid for at least 7 hours before bed.

Eat: More fiber and avoid snacking before bed time.

Alcohol: Avoid before bedtime.

Routine: create a relaxing routine 30 - 60 minutes before bedtime, such as a hot shower, gentle yoga, gratitude journaling.

Bed and bedroom: Cool, dark, and comfortable.

Sound: calming nature sounds (pink noise) has been found to increase deep sleep. Soothing music and binaural beats may help.

The American Sleep Association states, “The most important thing that you can do to increase your amount of deep sleep is to allow yourself adequate total sleep time.”

In our over-busy world, I can hear the eyeballs rolling of workers and parents around the world. Here is an article from Forbes that might help:

12 Effective Tips For Better Sleep As A Busy Professional

So that's it ... sleep well.

Love Letter to My Life #50: Asking for what I want

Wisdom Moon

(We know the day we were born, but most of us do not know the day we will die. This love letter to my life is written on the day I've designated as my death day: the 17th of every month, and reminds me to be grateful for my joy-filled life. In  December, I get to celebrate both my birth and death days on the same day. Joyce Wycoff)

"No matter what your condition in life, 

you can always be grateful."

 -- David Meltzer, Co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing

    The podcast with David Meltzer on Erik Huberman’s “HawkeTalk” was a happenstance. I had miles to go and had run out of my favorite podcast episodes. Meltzer was a sports guy, a rich sports guy, not my normal fount of wisdom, but there I was. Plus, one of my repeating life lessons is that you never know where wisdom and inspiration will show up. Once again it happened; listening to David Meltzer changed my trajectory.

Perhaps I was intrigued by his stated mission: empower OVER 1 billion people to be happy. And also by his focus on gratitude and his primary advice: ask for help. Everyone needs help and, if we believe we live in abundant Universe, there are people in the world who can help us. All we have to do is ask.

Like a lot of us, I grew up in a world that believed that asking for help was a sign of weakness, in schools where asking for help was often called “cheating,” in jobs where asking for help could be seen as not being competent. 

Several years ago, I got to see the other side. I lived with my favorite aunt for two years. She was the person who took in kids who had no place else to go; the one who baked cookies and always had another place at the table for anyone who was hungry. In our final time together though, she had become frail and needed care. Family and friends came from all around to help, to show their love and repay in some way all that she had given them. But, she had a difficult time accepting our help. She needed to be the giver and never realized what a gift she was giving us to be able to take care of her in small repayment of all of her kindness.

It's easy to understand that asking for help is a gift, since it is an implication of trust and respect. However, it takes courage to risk the possibility that the answer might be “no” or that we would be seen as weak or needy.

Jeffrey Davis from Tracking Wonder states, “Social psychology shows people are eager to help—if you know how to ask.”

Davis goes on to explain our reluctance to ask for help, “The mere thought of asking for help can eat away at our ego, undermine our confidence, make us question our abilities, and even paralyze us with anxiety. Yet in modern life—at a time when we are more digitally connected and emotionally detached than ever—the stark reality is that no one can go it alone.”

When David Meltzer encouraged his audience to start asking for help, I felt like he was speaking directly to me, pointing out a weakness of mine that needed work. 

So, I made a commitment to practice asking … 365 times!

At first, I thought I would find a way to ask for something every day and then realized that was a bit whacko. But, I liked the number and set forth to figure out how to ask for what I wanted in a way that might elicit an occasional “yes.” Surely, if I asked enough, someone would say, "yes."

Jeffrey Davis had some great tips … until I got to #3 Make it personal. Don’t ask for help over email or text. I almost abandoned the project right there. Getting a “no” or a no response by email is relatively painless. To actually call someone would put a whole lot more skin in the game. Plus, I don’t really know some of the people I want to ask for help.

By this time, I was on #31 of my goal to ask 365 times. While I had received two substantially positive responses, I realized I was approaching this project with an expectation of failure. I was playing safe when this deserved so much more. If I wasn't willing to risk more, why should I expect someone to support me?

This is where I am today and I’m making a commitment to learn more, risk more, be more personal, find a way to be clear in what I’m asking for and know how to craft win-win asks that have a better chance to succeed.

One of the reasons I'm willing to keep going on this project which is definitely outside my comfort zone is my passion for the project I want help with: Gratitude Mojo ... your transformation journey for a better life. For the past 13 months, Lynne Snead and I have been creating a journal/workbook focused on gratitude, self-awareness, and self-appreciation based on ancient wisdom and current neuroscience. We have seen major shifts in our own lives and in the lives of a few friends who have been on the journey with us. 

The deeper we go, the more we find that GRATITUDE is the foundation of everything ... happiness, health, success, relationships ... even huge things like peace, and climate change. What we are grateful for, we protect.

The journal/workbook is in final edit, the website will be done in days, and there is now a newsletter to support people on their journey into gratitude practice, which we believe is as necessary as brushing your teeth ... and almost as easy. However, current neuroscience has revealed that it's not as simple as what is commonly claimed. Noting 2-3 things a day you're grateful for is a lovely start, but there is more and doing the right things for a few minutes a day can make a major difference in the results you see.

So here's my ask #31: Please subscribe to the Gratitude Mojo Newsletter. It's free and will help you deepen your understanding and practice of gratitude. Eventually, you may want to buy the journal/workbook ... subscribing now will provide you with inspiration, research and notices of the upcoming release of the journal/workbook and webinars.

More next month.

Sources:

7 Keys To Asking For What You Really Want (So You Get It!) by Dr Margie Warrell, Forbes, April 24, 2013

4 Tips to Effectively Ask for Help—and Get a Yes, by Jeffrey Davis, Psychology Today, February 28, 2020

Sweet Peace #35: Cardio can be fun

Early morning light

(Thanks for joining me on this 52-week journey toward peace which began with sugar and food and now reaches out to every aspect of my path. May it sweeten your own journey. -- Joyce Wycoff)

150 minutes … that seems to be the standard recommendation for the minimum number of minutes of cardio exercise per week. So, what is cardio exercise?

Verywellfit.com provides a simple answer: any exercise that gets your heart rate up. It is, of course, slightly more complicated since it needs to get you into a specific cardio zone of 70% to 80% of your maximum heart rate. There’s a ton of internet information to help you figure out your own numbers … or you can depend on Fitbit or other devices that will track your cardio minutes for you. 

I’ve been wearing a Fitbit for about five years and never paid attention to the cardio minutes until recently when I kept hearing the 150 minutes number repeated in several places. So I decided to make it one of the metrics I track. For the month of July, I had 403 cardio minutes … and 152 of those were related to three long walks. Not exactly meeting the recommendation of 675 for four and a half months.

    The same pattern continued into this month and I realized that my normal, two+ mile daily walks were NOT getting me into cardio. If I was going to take the cardio recommendation seriously, I needed a different approach. I could power walk but that would interfere with the pleasure of walking and the joy photography. I immediately ruled out gyms … I hate gyms and most types of weight training and have donated too much money to underused gyms already.

Two things happened that changed everything. First, I discovered Flow Rope … a simple, easy movement of ropes that involves no jumping. (see YouTube instruction) I have a very small apartment, but I can turn on music and do flow rope for 10-15 minutes and most of that will be cardio. Turns out that raising and moving your arms is great for these lesser exercised parts of our bodies and creates more cardio-worthy minutes.

The second discovery came in a side door. I’m a huge fan of Andrew Huberman’s neuroscience podcasts and I’ve heard him talking about the value of getting morning sunshine for the past year. However, after listening to a recent podcast about the value of morning sunshine viewing to sleep quality, I decided to try it. The recommendation is to get 5 minutes of direct morning sun viewing, outside without sunglasses, but not in a way that harms your eyes and best done within the first hour after waking up.

I decided to pair it with a mile and a half early morning walk. After returning home and checking my numbers, I was shocked … 23 of the 30 minutes were cardio. It was a brisk walk but definitely not power walking. The next morning showed similar results. Additionally, my energy level throughout the day improved noticeably.

While I’m only a few days into this new routine, I am amazed at the changes in energy and sleep and plan to continue.

Notes:

Huberman Lab podcasts are long form, generally averaging 2 hours. I have summarized his latest episode on sleep and will be happy to send you a copy if you send an email request to info@gratitudemojo.com

Flow Ropes can be pricey, but I ordered a regular rope with nice handles from amazon for about $20. You may already have one in your garage. Watch the YouTube for length and basic forms.

If you’re serious about your health, I highly recommend Fitbit, Apple watches, or any other device that helps you track exercise, heart rate, and sleep.

If you’re hesitating because of age, I’m 76. Make allowances for your own health condition.