Give thanks

For simply giving thanks, when you lie down to sleep each night or from time to time, for no reason or rhyme, you'll begin to move with life instead of against it.

You'll be shown that life could not possibly be more beautiful than it already is. You'll see that you are the fountainhead of your experience. You'll remember that you transcend all things time and space, and thus are their very master. And you'll find that you live in a paradise where the only thing that truly seems impossible is how powerful you really are and how much you are loved.

What else would you think about, anyway? I bet many of you don’t think about life in this way. As adults and perhaps when we were children we had thoughts running around in our head.

This is what is called self-talk and it includes not only what people say to themselves out loud or inside our heads. Self-talk is set apart from other inner speech and non-language-based cognition, however, in that it has recognizable syntax and can occur either internally or out loud. When considered this way, self-talk can be defined as an act of syntactically recognizable communication in which the sender of the message is also the intended receiver.

By the time we have reached adulthood, we have heard the word no more than 200,000 times, and that has an effect on us. As some of here the negatives, we begin to use self-talk to reinforce what we hear from others. So the voice in our head starts to tell us we are not good enough, not smart enough, not beautiful or handsome enough and over time we begin to believe the lies we tell ourselves. So, my hope is that you will begin to focus on all the positives you have going for you. You are loved and respected and have friends and family, who see only the good in you. Perhaps it is time for you to start seeing the good within as well.

Female heart attack Signs

I received this on my facebook account, and thought it would be worth sharing. My mother-in-law died of a massive heart attack, and she may have had some minor ones before the one that caused her death. We were unaware of the information below. Hopefully this helps someone.

An ER nurse says this is the best description of a woman having a heart attack that she has ever heard. Please read, pay attention, and SHARE..........

FEMALE HEART ATTACKS
I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best description I've ever read.

Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have ... you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in movies. Here is the story of one woman's experience with a heart attack.

I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, 'A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.

A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you've been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you've swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn't have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation--the only trouble was that I hadn't taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).

This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. 'AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening -- we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven't we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I'm having a heart attack!

I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn't be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else... but, on the other hand, if I don't, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment.

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics... I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn't feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.

I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don't remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like 'Have you taken any medications?') but I couldn't make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery.

I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual men's symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn't know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they'll feel better in the morning when they wake up... which doesn't happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you've not felt before. It is better to have a 'false alarm' visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said 'Call the Paramedics.' And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!

Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a hazard to others on the road.

Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what's happening with you instead of the road.

Do NOT call your doctor -- he doesn't know where you live and if it's at night you won't reach him anyway, and if it's daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn't carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.

3. Don't assume it couldn't be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it's unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive.

A cardiologist says if everyone who sees this post would Share or re-post, you can be sure that we'll save at least one life.

*Please be a true friend and SHARE this article to all your friends, women & men too. Most men have female loved ones and could greatly benefit from know this information too!

A philosophical journey from here to there...

Do you think that if $10,000,000 were to be suddenly deposited into your checking account, that over the following months and years you'd have fewer and fewer challenges? Or do you think, perhaps, that your challenges would simply evolve and change?

Right, evolve and change.

And do you think that with your extra $10 million, you'd gradually be presented with more and more opportunities to be happy? Or do you think, perhaps, that your opportunities would simply evolve and change?

Right, evolve and change.

Now doesn't that give you something to think about?

Income Inequality

The percentage of people living in poverty has increased in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The OECD is an organization where the governments of 34 democracies with market economies work with each other, as well as with more than 70 non-member economies to promote economic growth, prosperity, and sustainable development.

In a recent report, the OECD looked at income inequality and I thought I would look at people who are seniors (over 65) and teenagers and adults (non-seniors) in the United States, Canada the UK and Australia to see how we compare. As you can see from the following chart, the rate of Canadian Seniors living in poverty is 9.9%, Great Britain 13.5%, the United States 20.6% and Australia 25.7%. So Canada looks good, but if you examine the trend line you see that in the United States it is flat, in Great Britain, and Canada the trend line is up and in Australia the trend line is down. 

In the 18-65-year-old group, the trend line in the United States, Canada is down, while the trend line for Australia is flat while the trend line for the United Kingdom is up. 

Trend lines show that the conditions for seniors in Canada and Great Britain may get worse, while seniors in Australia look like they are moving to a better place. 

Income Inequality at any age can lead to problems for the country and of course for the individuals that are living in poverty. So in many countries at this time of year, many people need your help. Please support your local food bank, if you can.

The report by the OECE does talk about the situation in the US and states that The United States is one of a few countries where employment among the prime working-age population is lower today than it was in 2000.

More specifically, it noted that in 2000 about 82 percent of Americans between the ages of 35 and 44 worked; by 2016, that number had slipped to 79 percent. The shortfall of employment is most striking among workers at the bottom rungs. While more than four-fifths of the highly educated working-age population is actually working, the report says, only about half of those with low education levels are.

While the inequalities among people of working age are a primary reason for inequalities among older Americans — the inequalities follow people into retirement — ill health is another critical source of difference. More than 1 in 3 American adults is obese, more than in any other OECD country, according to the OECD, and the ill health is concentrated among the poor.