77 (+7) Ways to Keep Your Heart Healthy and Happy for 100 Years or Longer

Posted on Balanced Body, Balanced Lifestyle, Balanced Mind and Soul, Balanced Nutrition | March 9, 2010 | 7 Comments

This post was written by Anastasiya. Follow me on Twitter or StumbleUpon and keep your life balanced!

Image by alicepopkorn.

When you hear the word “heart” what do you think about? Do you think about a heart attack or do you think about love, do you think about health or do you think about kindness and generosity? Maybe some of you will think about Ann and Nancy Wilson and will get the song “Barracuda” stuck in your heads but this is not the heart I am talking about.

I am not sure if you’ve heard about it or not but February was heart awareness month. I know that February is long gone (I might be a little behind but I do have a calendar on my desktop ) but our heart is with us every day and every second of our lives. Do we really need to be aware of it just one month a year?

A healthy and strong heart is what lets us enjoy our life, it lets us be healthy and happy, it lets us be open to new experiences and love. Our heart is what makes us alive in a physical and spiritual sense. Your heart is the ultimate indicator of how much balance you have in your life because your lifestyle has the biggest impact on your ticker.

I want to challenge you to take care of your heart today and every day from now on. There are hundreds of things that you can do that will ensure that your heart stays young (in both senses) all your life.

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” – Proverbs 17:22

Taking care of your heart only physically is not enough. A recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that keeping your weight under control, having your BMI under 30, being active and not smoking reduced risks of dying prematurely of any chronic disease (including cardiovascular disease) by 80%! (Can you think of any pill that can do the same?) But these changes will not be enough if you forget about the other side of your heart. That side is rejuvenated through kindness, love, affection, friendship and faith. Let me show you 77 (+7) ways how you can keep your heart healthy and open to the world every day of your life. Balance it more »

Can You Be Averagely Great or Greatly Average?

Posted on Balanced Lifestyle, Balanced Mind and Soul | March 6, 2010 | 16 Comments

This post was written by Anastasiya. Follow me on Twitter or StumbleUpon and keep your life balanced!

Image by Yves.

We live in a great world full of miracles and wonderful people. Every day something amazing is going on in this world and we all want to be part of that.

You have probably heard how wonderful it is to be great and how important it is to find your “greatness” in life. You know, everybody has something great about them, sometimes we just do not know what it is. Being great means that you are not average, you are not just a dot in the picture of life, you are a star.

I think, though, that greatness can be a burden. Not everybody should be great (at least all the time) because this greatness can ruin your life. I feel that sometimes you just need to be average. Give me a few seconds before you start completely disagreeing with me and showering this post with infuriated comments.

I was watching the Olympics this year and I saw some of the greatest people on our planet (at least in the physical sense.) Even the ones who didn’t qualify but still got to the Olympics are great examples of human strength, determination and will power in my opinion.

However, I felt bad for some of the athletes, especially the ones who got medals in the previous Olympic Games. The entire world was expecting them to be great and to perform excellent this year. If they didn’t perform as well as they were supposed to they were criticized and analyzed by all those sports experts. The world was expecting more greatness of them than they could deliver.

When you feel the pressure that you need to be great your life loses joy and happiness. Imagine that you are in a bad mood and somebody comes up to you and tells you “You must be happy and joyous right now!” Even if you decide to try being happy you will probably fail completely and your mood will only worsen.

The same thing happens with greatness. When you hear on every corner (ok, every personal development blog or publication) that you need to be great in something you feel pressure. This pressure blocks your creativity and your thoughts, so instead of being great you become stuck. Balance it more »

The Hidden Values of Moderation for You

Posted on Balanced Mind and Soul | March 3, 2010 | 10 Comments

This post was written by Anastasiya. Follow me on Twitter or StumbleUpon and keep your life balanced!

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Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.
Democritus.

You have probably heard about moderation a lot of times already but before you decide that this post will not bring any value into your life, STOP! Stop right here and read at least a couple of paragraphs. I promise that I will show you how you can change your life and even the world for the better after you finish this article.

Democritus (look at the top of the page) was a wise guy but can you really have too much of everything? The word “moderation” usually comes to mind when we are talking about food and obesity. It sounds like the lose-weight-in-a-healthy-way type of advice but it does not seem to be connected with other good things in our life. Can you have too much love that will bring pain into your life or can you have too much kindness? Can you have too much faith and can you be too health-conscious? It seems that moderation is not always needed, isn’t it?

I must agree with Democritus, without moderation the happy life is impossible.

It is difficult to stay moderate in the present world because we have such an abundance of pleasures and opportunities that are so easily accessible. We can eat exotic fruit from all over the world, we can buy a lot of toys for ourselves, we can travel anywhere we want to (well, almost anywhere), we can help people with a touch of a button (donating to charities online), we can pamper ourselves and we can afford so many other things.

We are constantly stimulated with new pleasures that bring happiness into our lives. But what happens when the “high” effect is gone? You need more stimulants to feel good and at a certain point simple pleasures that are available in everyday life do not work anymore.

You lose the ability to be happy just because you are healthy and you had a decent day at work.

A romantic supper at home with your loved one seems very boring compared to the delicious meal you’ve just had a restaurant the other day.

Your kids do not appreciate a family outing to the park because it is nothing compared to the water park and cinema you took them to last time.

The simple pleasures of life are lost not only for you but also for people around you, the ones who you want to protect and to whom you want to give the best in this world.

We have forgotten the values of moderation for our lives. It is so sad because moderation is the key to life, and not just any life but a happy and balanced life.

Here are 7 values of moderation that I find vital for balanced living. Balance it more »

Are You a Social Chameleon?

Posted on Balanced Mind and Soul | February 27, 2010 | 28 Comments

This post was written by Anastasiya. Follow me on Twitter or StumbleUpon and keep your life balanced!

Image by anonymonk

One of the biggest treasures that we have in life is our individuality. Whether it is an original smile, an extraordinary sense of style, peculiar humor, deep compassion, special talent or the way we see the world – all these things make us who we are.

I noticed that sometimes we forget about our individuality and try to blend in with our surroundings. We act like chameleons who want to look exactly the same as their environment. For chameleons this is a defense strategy, is it the same for us?

Sometimes it takes a lot of effort and courage to maintain our individuality no matter what. We risk being laughed at, we risk losing friends or a job, we risk our relationships, we risk being misunderstood and feeling like losers.

You do not think about it until you meet a perfect guy or girl who you want to date and who does not support your beliefs (anything from religion to nutrition.) You do not think about it until you get a new job where everybody thinks that your style is ridiculous (and constantly mentions it to you.) You do not think about it until you get to a party where nobody understands your jokes and looks at you like you are an alien from another planet. You do not think about it until you move to a new country (and sometimes even a city) where everything is so different from what you are used to. At that point your only desire is to blend in and not to stick out like a sore thumb.

I think this is a built-in survival instinct that makes us blend in and lose our individuality. Unfortunately, when we lose our individuality we also lose happiness in life. We lose that inner balance that keeps us afloat and lets us withstand any of life’s storms. Balance it more »

The Book of Wisdom – 101 Posts for the All-Around Balanced Life

Posted on Balanced Lifestyle | February 23, 2010 | 34 Comments

This post was written by Anastasiya. Follow me on Twitter or StumbleUpon and keep your life balanced!

Image by Lori Greig

Our lives are different and it takes different steps for each of us to reach our life balance. Life balance in return is the ultimate state at which you can feel that you are happy with your life. Your life does not need to be perfect but you must have just enough positive points that will help you offset any negative situations or problems that you might encounter. Of course it is great to strive for the best and all-around perfect life but we all know that this goal is unreachable.

For over a year now I have been writing about different aspects of balance and I know that I have not covered even half of them yet. Because there is SOOOO much to cover. Every day I learn a lot and face challenges that make me come up with new strategies for my own life balance.

In my last week post I wrote about the only way you can finally bring your life into balance and I promised to give you my own Book of Wisdom – a collection of posts from all over the web that can help you do so. Here they are, 101 posts to a balanced life. Take your time and savor each of them because they are all worth your time. Balance it more »