Hope – is the future, is teamwork to build a better future.

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

― Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (goodreads.com)

We are blessed,
a loving eye in the sky
Shines forth, glory is ours.

Teamwork – requires communication and working together in spite of differences. Diversity within a team can improve the variety of skills, experience and ideas available to the team. Teams do not all have to be best friends to work together, adult maturity looks at that long view, the whole is greater than any of the parts.

In the recent post: Strategic Mindset & Grit – try, try, try again, but a little bit better each time, we learned that the people who built Stonehenge (U.K.) took approximately 1175 years to complete the various phases of its development into the world’s largest astronomical calendar. Now that is teamwork, and dedication. They may have hoped to improve crop production due to a lengthy change in the weather to cooler temperatures that supported fewer crops. The people of the time increased their use of grazing animals for their survival during the long cold snap (~700 years or more, I’m not a historian).

Miracles exist
In our hearts and in our minds,
One life at a time.
Many lives over all of time.

None of us is as smart as all of us” – Ken Blanchard

We got this, the world
In the palms of our hands, all
Joined together, One.

On the other side of darkness is light – let there be light for growth and discovery, and let there be darkness for rest and recovery.

Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.

Know where to look

What I learned in college is that knowing where to look something up for more detail is the critical skill to learn. Knowledge is fluid, as more is learned some of the old information is confirmed and some is modified or found to be inaccurate.

” I am not young enough to know everything.” – Oscar Wilde

The older you get the more you realize how little you know in relation to what is known and what has yet to be discovered or clarified.

Librarians and social workers are skilled at knowing where to look for more information or who to ask about resources that might be available.

Public health education involves some social work and librarian skills – no one can know everything but a public health educator tries to have access to more information about many things.

Taking note of where information is located and remembering where you left the note is a skill that librarians excel at – having a file system on paper, or virtually, can also help organize your memories. Do you file information by categories or alphabetical order or by Dewey Decimal system?

A description of working memory, short term memory skills for every day activities, is available by ADDitude, a magazine site focused on Attention Deficit Disorder: Improve Working Memory. It includes tips for tasks like improving your ability to remember where you put your keys or that you have an appointment scheduled. My own tendency to lose my car keys led me to develop the habit of only putting them in a few places, my purse or right hand pocket, and also a habit of checking that they are there in the pocket every time I go through the door to leave a building. Not trying to multitask is a tip that may help most people concentrate better as research suggests that it uses more energy to keep switching back and forth between tasks. (PsychologyToday/multitasking)

For long term memory building, writing notes down in physical handwriting also seems to help fix the memory in our long term storage better even if we don’t look at the note again. (PsychologicalScience/note taking) I have gotten better at using the typewritten note taking ability of this blog site because it has a search capacity. As long as I remember key words that I used I can usually find where I had written something. Learning is more likely to be retained if the information is reviewed occasionally, and in order to review it occasionally you need to be able to find it again. The internet is a big place, I like to leave myself a trail of bread crumbs to help me navigate.

Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use.

The kitchen is my R and D lab

When “food is thy medicine” (paraphrase Hippocrates) the kitchen is your Research and Development Lab for health care maintenance and sometimes treatment. The addition of Epsom salt also can make the bathtub a healthcare facility.

Disclosure: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use. While I am a Registered Dietitian it is not intended to provide individualized health care guidance. Please seek an individual health care professional for the purpose of individualized health care guidance. Thanks.

I work for the children and the planet

“Don’t work harder than the client,” was something social workers in public health recommended – for sensible reasons. There was always more clients and more need and sad, sad stories in public health that couldn’t be helped with our limited number of staff and budget. It was also about common sense, you can encourage change and provide guidance but you can’t make people change when they aren’t interested or ready. The strategy helped with preventing work burnout too, not getting too emotionally involved in the difficulties instead focus on compassion for their difficulties.

However I did have difficulty with the recommendation because I also saw the children as my clients. In the book Timequake the author, Kurt Vonnegut, wrote as a repeated statement in different ways the theme that children don’t ask to be born – – – so underlying theme- – – we shouldn’t blame them for the circumstances of their birth or parents or whatever the example included in the section pertained to.

Currently in the U.S. also adults are facing grim odds – one in two men are statistically likely to develop cancer in their lifetimes and one in every three women — what odds will the next generation likely have? Currently almost two percent of children in the U.S. have autism and roughly twenty percent of the young adult generation have mental health diagnoses and roughly twenty percent identify as something other than heterosexual/customer gender. What will the numbers be for the next generation?  (for those interested in self care information the Nrf2 promoting foods and recipes (Nrf2 posts) are likely helpful for prevention and/or treatment for cancer – unless it is a form of cancer that has developed ways to use Nrf2  to resist chemotherapy – some types of leukemia  cancer strains may have that capability – mentioned at the end of this post: https://transcendingsquare.com/2018/04/05/age-is-a-state-of-mind-and-health/

If tobacco use is preferred but concern for health is also a preference then having a little extra attention to diet may help provide the nutrients that are depleted and that may include a depletion of Nrf2 (research article with animal based study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28641491) so the Nrf2 promoting diet tips may help protect the body when use of tobacco products is a choice – the nicotine itself can provide some benefits to some people. )

I personally am being helped by the health information that I’ve learned and if only twenty people read and use it then I will be glad for them or their children- even if only one child or individual is helped then it will have been worth sharing the information. Kurt Vonnegut cared and likely still cares in some form, in my opinion at least – I will work in his memory – because no child asked to be born and therefore they all deserve e our compassion and help

Disclosure: This information is being provided for the purpose of education within the guidelines of Fair Use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individualized health care guidance. Please seek an individual health care professional for the purpose of individualized health care guidance. Thanks