Category: book reviews

How to Be Well

Christina BruniLeave a comment

how to be well

This book is the real deal just like How to Make Disease Disappear.

In the coming blog entries I’m going to write about health topics touched on in How to Be Well.

It was my goal to turn back to talking about fitness and nutrition.

With January 1st coming up soon a lot of us are going to want to achieve resolutions.

As always, there’s one goal-setting book I recommend. I seem to have altered the title before in the blogs. The actual title is Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions.

This method is effective no matter the kind of behavior you seek to change.

One goal I have–I really don’t like to use the word resolution–is to create a better weekly meal plan and fitness routine.

Step 1 of the Changeology method is Psych. In order to be effective in realizing your resolution you first have to get in the mental game to do this.

Joining a gym and firing away at exercise before you engage in the Psych Step you’re going to run out of steam two months later and quit.

I’m going to end here with the truth that I’ll continue to detail in the coming blog entry: M.D.s don’t eat junk according to Frank Lipman, M.D. the author of How to Be Well.

He devotes a section of the book to GMOs which should be required reading.

I’d like to start in the next two weeks to use this blog as a forum for New Year’s goal-setting.

My aim is to show how it’s possible to realize your resolutions.

 

Dark Horse

Christina BruniLeave a comment

In only five hours I read the book Dark Horse: Achieving Success through the Pursuit of Fulfillment. Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas have written the definitive guide to finding the career that is the right fit.

From the inside book flap:

“This mold-breaking approach doesn’t depend on your SAT scores, who you know, or how much money you have.

The secret is a mindset that can be expressed in plain English:

Harness your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment to achieve excellence.”

The authors detail the achievements of a high-school dropout who created her own telescope observatory in her backyard. She found and named an asteroid and found a planet. This put her in the ranks of astronomers with PhDs.

This woman and the other people talked about in the book are dark horses because no one could see their success coming.

My memoir Left of the Dial is a full-length book recounting of my own dark horse life.

Those of us who are dark horses got here via a long and winding path.

Todd Rose and Ogi Ogas in their book rail against the “cookie-cutter mold for success that requires us to be the same as everyone else, only better.”

This “standard formula” is the root of inequality. People are competing to get better grades, get into elite colleges and universities, and get coveted jobs.

It really is a treadmill. One woman featured in Dark Horse willingly got on this competitive treadmill thinking this was what she was supposed to do.

She crashed, and had to rethink her whole life. Today she is successful as the operator of an underground supper club.

I say: stop living life on autopilot. Live an authentic life.

We don’t have to trample over each other in our lives like it’s a Black Friday sale every day. We don’t have storm through the doors reaching to achieve things at the expense of everyone else.

The book flap asks:

“As much as we might dislike the standard formula, it seems like there’s no other practical path to financial security and a fulfilling life.

But what if there is?””

I recommend readers of the blog buy Dark Horse.

I for one think the book is the most uplifting and inspiring literature I’ve ever read of any genre.

In the next blog entry I’ll talk about having a career linked to your individuality.

The Pillar of Relax

Christina BruniLeave a comment

Engaging in the habits outlined in the Pillar of Relax is imperative to our health.

In this go-go-go world we can have a breakdown. Our bodies are not machines. We’re human beings that need rest and recreation every day.

The strategy I employ is a simple one predicated on mindfulness: pay attention to what your body is telling you to do and how your body feels at any given time during the day.

One Sunday it was unseasonably colder. My body had gone on strike it seemed. There would be no going to the gym and no going outside.

Pushing yourself to do demanding activities is a mistake when your body is telling you to slow down and rest. Yet too often people think that being busy is a sign of health.

Being busy isn’t a sign of health. Being fit and active is the barometer of health.

You can do less every day and achieve more peace of mind and better health.

We should not be checking work e-mails from home. In my house I have the inviolable rule of not checking work e-mails when I’m on vacation.

The corollary to relaxing is the Pillar of Sleep. Dr. Chatterjee recommends establishing the 90-Minute Rule: shutting down all TV, cell phone, and tablet use 90 minutes before you go to bed.

Getting enough rest and recreation can absolutely halt disease from starting or progressing.

I’ll end this blog entry by saying that for years I was skeptical that a person’s behavior and lifestyle choices could cause disease.

Now I know without a doubt that the keys to unlocking optimal health are in our own hands. We are not passive victims of illness. Disease is not the natural outcome of getting older. It’s too often the result of inactivity and poor choices.

Sacred Contracts

Christina BruniLeave a comment

My mentor stayed clean for decades. I think he was motivated to live drug-free because he wanted more than anything to help people.

If you ask me figuring out your Sacred Contract–essentially your life purpose–can give you the motivation to stay healthy and care for yourself.

Caroline Myss believes our sacred contracts are life assignments given to us to carry out in this lifetime.

A client of hers is quoted in the book Sacred Contracts. Liza had dreamed she was in a small rowboat going in circles. She could see an ocean liner in the distance and wanted to be on that ship not stuck where she was. Liza had been paralyzed in an accident and had to makeover her career and her life.

To quote Liza: “The key is to learn to row the boat you were given.”

I recommend you buy these two Myss books. Any kind of self-improvement project that is healthy shouldn’t be frowned on. We should only be competing against how we were yesterday–not against what other people can do today.

I say: “No thank you” to critics who compare peers to people who don’t have MH issues. The size of another person’s ocean liner shouldn’t concern us.

In a coming blog entry I’m going to talk about The Myth of Competitive Employment.

The Life Work of Caroline Myss

Christina BruniLeave a comment

Years ago I chanced upon the life work of Caroline Myss.

A book she wrote was reviewed in a women’s magazine. Archetypes: Who Are You? intrigued me after I bought and read it so I then bought her book Sacred Contracts.

Her discovery of a condition she called woundology has been accepted in the medical field. I wrote about woundology circa a year ago.

You might be skeptical of all this like a friend of mine was. I urge you to suspend your disbelief. The life work of Caroline Myss I’ve found to be as good as taking a career quiz in helping a person live authentically and thrive beautifully.

Everyone has four of the same archetypes: child, prostitute, saboteur, and victim. Each of us has eight unique archetypes for a total of 12 archetypes. You can cast a Chart of Origin where each archetype is inserted in one of the 12 houses of the zodiac.

Your 12 archetypal patterns are used to carry out the terms of your Sacred Contract. You might think this is all speculation or hooey or some kind of parlor trick.

Yet I’ve found this study to be immensely helpful. You might also think that limiting yourself this way is restrictive. It’s not because who among us would really want to spread our energies thin trying to do things we’re not suited for or that amount to busywork?

Homing in on your archetypes can actually bring emotional freedom if you ask me.

It might come as no surprise to loyal followers that three of my own archetypes are Author Advocate and Visionary.

You can go on the Archetypes website and take the quiz to discover your Top 3 Archetypes. The founder of the Archetypes website has changed around things a bit. Fashionista has been renamed Tastemaker.

So I wouldn’t rely totally on this website for an in-depth analysis of your archetypes. The woman who created the website linked to the Myss Archetypes: Who Are You? book has turned the site into a forum for selling products.

The woman who founded the archetypes website had originally founded philosophy the beauty products company years ago.

In the next blog entry I’m going to continue this talk with information about figuring out your sacred contract. This is the plan for your life’s purpose.

This kind of self-improvement project if you ask me can be an effective recovery tool as an adjunct to traditional treatment.

You can use this information along with taking a career quiz if you think it would help you.

My New Year’s Goal

Christina BruniLeave a comment

The science is clear: people can and do keep New Year’s resolutions.

How is this possible? They start and follow through on a 90-day action plan.

The action plan is executed in a step-by-step fashion. Each stage of the plan must be followed in a specific order: Psych Prep Plan Perspire and Persist.

Following the steps out of order or getting stuck in a certain step–a step mismatch–makes it harder to achieve your goal.

The bulk of the action plan occurs over two months where you’re actively engaged in the new behavior.

You can read the book Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions to see how it’s possible to yes keep a New Year’s resolution.

It’s available as an e-book so you can install it on your iPad or other device.

The author reminds the reader that drawing upon outside support is crucial in making your goal happen.

My goal is to eat more healthful food six days a week.

To this end I have signed up for a meal delivery service.

I’ve ordered chicken with diced sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts, turkey with mashed turnips and broccoli, a side of sweet potato wedges, a side of broccoli, and a side of Brussels sprouts. Plus an apple muffin and chocolate avocado balls and pancakes.

I will report back in here how the food tastes. You simply heat-and-eat the food so there’s no long arduous prep time to get the meals ready.

It’s the KettleBell Kitchen service and available in the New York City area.

I will report back this weekend on my experience.

My Second Nonfiction Book

Christina BruniLeave a comment

I’ve been remiss in publishing blog entries here because I’ve been editing and revising the book proposal for the second nonfiction book I want to publish.

It’s a one-of-its-kind career guide. I will be able to tell you more about this in October.

October is Disability Employment Awareness Month.

Coming up in October I will return to writing about career topics.

As of tonight I’ll be returning to writing blog entries here.

What I’d like to start out writing about this week is a true story.

It goes back to my time working as an administrative assistant in an insurance office.

That was my first-ever full-time job after I stopped collecting government benefits.

Stay tuned.

 

 

Changeology

Christina BruniLeave a comment

I’m in the middle of getting my second non-fiction book ready to publish soon. I hope to be able to publish this book within two years from now.

For now I would like to talk again about goal-setting.

It’s going to be spring soon and I think new season is the perfect time to make changes.

To this end I’d like to recommend a book–Changeology–about setting and achieving goals.

It’s a 5-Step process that has been scientifically documented in research as being effective in getting results.

The only drawback I find to the book is that it focuses only on changing negative behaviors like smoking and drinking and bad parenting.

You CAN use the book to create other behavior changes that are positive. You just won’t find your particular behavior talked about in the book. Yet you can still use this proven 5-Step process to execute change.

Using this system might indeed help a person stop smoking or drinking or overeating or whatever their unproductive habit is.

I will continue to talk about goal-setting in here in the coming blog entries.