What we do for good health

Honestly, how many of us like lemon water, whole wheat bread, kale or brown rice? I heard lemon water is great for detox and digestive system; whole wheat bread and brown rice are healthier than white bread and white rice. Kale, high in fiber and vitamins, is a healthy food, (though I was told by a Safeway cashier kalr is out, water crest is in now). Most super foods are not tasty, but for the sake of health, we alter eating habits and compromise the tastes.

We also spend the little spare time we have to exercise, or sometime starve ourselves so we could keep our weights down. We drink lots of water because it's Important to stay hydrated, despite the annoyance of frequent bathroom visits. 

Living a healthy lifestyle is such a pain sometimes. 

Walk and chew gum

How is the saying go? "One cannot walk and chew gum at the same time." Recently I was thinking about this saying and was slightly confused. Is it "talk and chew gum," or "walk and chew gum?"

I thought, how could it be? Everyone can walk and chew gum at the same time. What's the point of that saying? If one cannot walk and chew gum at the same time, that person must be pretty uncoordinated, wouldn't you say?

As far as I know, people nowadays not only can walk and chew gum, but also can walk and talk and chew gum while texting and gaming at the same time. In restaurants, public transportations, parks and streets, we see people, walking or sitting, immerse themselves in their devices like zombies, as if the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Electronic gadgets are ruining people and their lives as we speak. Handheld devices and gaming consoles enable and encourage people of all ages to mindlessly shut out the the world and the people around them. Deeply attached to the manmade devices, pseudo social update snippets, and virtual reality games, those people behave like dull machines.

If nobody tells you so, then let me be the first one to say that such behavior in public is offensive and rude. Just because everyone does it doesn't mean it's right. Likewise, just because you can do it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. Parents, take up the responsibility to teach your children the right behaviors right now, otherwise they will be spanked by the society sooner and later.

Digital evolution

Aaa, Sunday morning, people used to read newspaper over breakfast, or like Jack and I, bouncing interesting ideas off of each other over coffee. And now what do we do? Each of us having an iPad and separately dwelling deep into the cyber space. I really miss the good old days.

Jack spent an hour looking for a heavy duty tool to move big logs from one place to another for a land preservation project. It makes me think. With the rate the eCommerce grows, what's going to happen to the retail stores. Sadly, some of them will go out of business. And what's going to happen to the vacant spaces? Perhaps more new restaurants, or yoga studios.

Happy or sad

Once a while I listen to CDs while driving. I have Train, Lady Gaga, Music and Lyrics sound track, and a few Chinese CDs.

I have a CD that is a concert of this Taiwan singer, and he sings the sweetest love songs. With a beautiful clear voice, he was crowned prince of love songs in Taiwan. I really liked to play his songs, because they made me haopy... well, until I couldn't stop singing these songs in my head.

I have two other CDs from two female singers, one from Hong Kong, and the other from Singapore, and they both sang sad, sad breakup songs. The depressing songs weren't great, and I only played their songs for sentimental reasons.

Comedies or love songs can bring people happiness, and sad breakup songs can really put people in a sad frame of mind.

The good thing is, we have choices of what to listen to and what to watch based on our taste and the moment. Just remember, when it doesn't work for you anymore, you can always turn it off or change the station.

Fear factor and mental block

I was brought up in a sheltered environment.  Since I was very young, my parents did not let me do many things, such as jumping around, or climbing trees, fearing of scraping of skin or breaking bones. Therefore, P.E. classes were my biggest fear. I hated climbing rope, high jump, or even plain old running.

Intellectually, for some very odd reason, I also grew up as a person with low self esteem, and it took me until the recent years to shake it off. There could be many reasons why I had such a low self esteem, and many of them point to being a Chinese girl growing up in China. My parents just didn't want to let anything (harmful) happen to me.

It also took me a while to stop blaming the society or my parents for my 'weaknesses', and focus on growing out of my own shadows. By the way, I strongly encourage anyone over 30 to start doing so, and taking responsibility to oneself.

Obviously there were many things that were told to me, which were wrong, but I erroneously absorbed them like a sponge. I would call them "myths". Luckily, in college, I took this class called: "critical thinking", which I enjoyed very much, even though I took it as credit/non credit, because of heavy computer science course work. Let's apply "critical thinking" to the following myths I have heard since childhood, and discuss briefly why they were merely myths, nevertheless they could bring adverse impact to someone's upbringing and adult life.

First and foremost, and this I still hear today among my relatives. "Girls are not good with math, physics and science." Many years ago, when I heard my cousin said that to my girl cousin, I protested furiously, "you should never say such things to a girl! Girls can do math and physics as well as boys." I heard the same from my own physics teacher in middle school. Back then I believed him, so I didn't try at all to learn the course, because, "obviously I'm not good at it." Luckily, when I came to the U.S., I sort of had a second chance to try things I normally didn't dare when I was in China. I found math and physics easy to understand when I studied them in college, which encouraged me to learn other challenging subjects.

As far as my lacking physical abilities. It was changed since I started hanging out with Jack. He got me to go snowboarding, kiteboarding and scuba diving. None of which I would have done on my own. Back in college, my physical exercises were limited to jogging, aerobics classes, and the occasion Tai Chi. If it weren't for the purpose of weight lost, I would have been a perfect book worm, aka, nerd.

My conclusion and lessons learned? Fear factors, however they were ingested into us, create mental blocks. Apply critical thinking to everything in life. Question everything you heard and check the sources. Don't let your fear impair and limit you. Go out of your comfort zone once a while or you will never know what you'll find. If you ended up not liking what you found, then move on. For example, I now find out I'm afraid of heights, and am still unable to do Yoga inversion poses because of fear.

So like Dory said in the animation, Finding Nemo, "Well, you can't never let anything happen to him (Nemo). Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo." I also like this quote I heard somewhere: "People say 'you can't do it' just because they can't do it themselves."