Give Me 10! Find Balance and Reach Your Goals.

"I am honored to have the opportunity to write on your blog. Your blog does all that is best about the internet -- unifying a far-reaching audience and creating a community. While I am not affected by NF, I will pass along a little about what I do, in the hopes that it is useful for you. I started a blog called Give Me 10! The 10-minute solution to find balance and reach your goals. The point of it is that we all have very busy days, pulled in countless directions, giving to so many. But there are ways to sneak in a little personal time into the brief (and all too infrequent!) free moments of the day.

In the midst of stressful times, it's easy to put personal time on the back burner. But we all deserve at least 10-minute for our own well-being -- 10 minutes isn't long enough to feel guilty, it's too short to feel frustrated, and it fits into the nooks and crannies of the day -- you don't miss a beat attending to the other obligations.

Too often, we feel guilty taking time for ourselves -- taking a bath, reading a book, laying down for a few minutes. But knowing that you're giving yourself a time limit makes it feel less like an indulgence. The same goes for the less savory tasks that are important to us but overwhelming -- cleaning the garage, getting our finances in order. We delay even taking these on because we know we feel like we need a whole weekend to handle them (and when do we have that?) and we don't know where to start. But if we wade into the job for just a few minutes, we realize it's not as bad as it seemed, and we can chip away at the project little by little.

The point of Give Me 10! is to simply "advance the ball" on our own personal goals just a little bit every day. Just getting out of our day-to-day for just a little while can really inspire calm, confidence, perspective. Somehow it soften the edges a bit on the rest of life.

If you want to get started, here's what I'd suggest...

- Pick a goal or two (think right brain/left brain; mind/body/spirit; think of the times you've said, "One day I'd like to..." or "I wish I had learned to..."; or tackle an item that's been on the to-do list forever)

- Write a mission statement for your goals (this is not meant to be work! It's just meant to help you clarify what you would like to happen -- it can and will change as you get into the work.)

- Think of what you'll do for 10 minutes on the goal today and tomorrow (this will help build momentum; and by the way, it doesn't have to be a big "to do" -- it can be "find the file" or "set up the card table" -- sometimes just finding the materials and creating the space is the hardest part)

I give some suggestions of ways to find the time for your goals on my website: http://www.GiveMe10.info/, and readers share their tips and tricks, too. I'd love to hear if you try it and how it works for you! Be well..."

Green Juice, Dharma Talks & California Beaches

This summer our family took a different approach to NF. The 6 months prior to the summer vacation were filled with PET scans, MRIs, surgery, pathology reports and needless to say STRESS. Stress on our NF child and his two siblings aged 5 & 9. So we rearranged some doctor appointments and took off for a month for CA beaches, Dharma talks and ultimately green juices. Packed tightly in the car we drove from the midwest to CA-- hitting Colorado mountain air with alpine slides and rock walls, Utah red rock hikes, and then SOCA beaches and the best thing cousins! We then headed to a family retreat at a Monastery in Escondido CA. There are no electronics, all vegan food, and some silence. This is a place where children blossom and parents get to connect ( I believe every parent on some level believes they are messing up). You get to listen to monks and nuns talk about the practice of compassion. Children sing, craft, nature hike and learn too about compassion. Panels of lay persons round out the dharma talks. You eat, clean and share with other families. We always leave with knowledge, calm and better prepared. In my case better prepared for the upcoming MRI. Tumors and MRIs tend to throw me into what feels like a tidal wave of worry that feels so gripping it is hard to breath. So I hope with my pack of dharma knowledge I will breath through the next one. Upon return to the Midwest I had a consult with none other than the ultimate positive healing junkie Kris Carr. I had to fess up our diet for a week. This was after a weekend in WI Dells land of hotdogs and french fries. We had a long discussion on tumor growth and nutritional therapies. She herself has stopped Stage 4 cancer from progressing for the past 7 years through a highly alkaline diet. She and a slew of others advocate upping alkaline foods to slow tumor growth and diminish inflammation. Stress being a big part of inflammation she too spoke of meditation as our monks in CA. So now I just need to put it all into practice this idea of creating balance while living with NF. MRI in two days small tidal wave-- a start. Oh and we drink our green juices (some of the time).