Author Archives: Elisabeth

My Self Help Blog Is Finally Mobile Friendly

self help blog mobile friendlyI’ve been meaning to update my self help blog for ages, and I finally did it. I went through each one of the blog posts, deleted some, updated many, and put a good number in draft mode so I can fix them later). And my self help blog is finally mobile friendly!

What took me so long?

Well, it’s a BIG blog. It had almost 250 posts, and I wanted to make sure everything was safely backed up before I started messing with it.

Well, thanks to my trusty backup software, I was able to back it up.

Making My Self Help Blog Mobile Friendly

And then, I held my breath and updated the ancient version of WP to the current one. Everything went well.

But in order to make it mobile friendly, I had to change the theme too. That was part of the hold up. I really liked the old theme. I mean, it has been the familiar theme for about 9 years!

Alas, that theme didn’t have any recent versions, and it was decidedly not mobile friendly.

So I did what I had to do, and, well, I was surprised at how much I like the result. I was able to create a header image that maintains the overall feel of the previous theme: A serene beach house scene on Hawaii’s Big Island. In fact, I find it striking just how similar to the original it is.

Updating My Self Help Blog

Once I had the frame updated, it was time to deal with the content. I had written almost 250 blog posts, some of them lengthy, some of them not so lengthy. Either way, I had to take a close look at every one of them and do one of three things: Keep (usually with fixes and updates), delete, or put in draft mode for later editing.

So I started with the oldest post and worked my way forward. Some of my earlier posts were more like extended Facebook posts, so I deleted quite a few. But then, I shared information I was really pleased with, and that I wanted to save.

But some of the links were no longer working. So I fixed them all. If there was a complicated case where I needed to do some research, I put the post into draft mode.

And I kept moving, and moving, and moving, and voila!

I went from 246 original published posts to 139 published posts, 60 in trash and 47 in “draft” mode.

Next Step For My Favorite Self Help Blog

So what’s next? Now that I have overhauled the whole blog, I’m ready to post again, lots. I’m also working on getting it found again. I’ll be posting on my Favorite Self Help Stuff Facebook page and running promoted posts…

And as time permits, I’ll go through the drafts, this time from the newest to the older ones, and make sure everything works. And then I publish those too, for the most part.

I’ll also go back through all those categories and try to reduce them to a more manageable number. When I first started this blog, I was really new to the online world, and didn’t know how categories worked, or keywords for that matter.

Now, I realize that my blog posts will be much more effective if they’re more focused on fewer keywords. And so I’m going to check on my keywords and delete a few.

Finally, I’m going to link to some of my older posts from the newer ones, to help my readers find related content.

Please Visit My Updated Self Help Blog

In the meantime, I’d like to invite you to visit my newly updated Self Help Blog and look around. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Let me know what you think!

Elisabeth

How to Avoid Getting Sick in the Winter

avoid getting sick in winterDo you hate getting sick during the winter? It’s a real drag, and yet it’s so easy to avoid. And just how can you avoid it? Today, I’d like to share some of my favorite strategies to stay healthy even when the days are short and you have to spend time around sneezing and coughing people.

First, it’s helpful to avoid hanging around coughing and sneezing people. But sometimes, that’s not possible. So how can you avoid catching whatever they have? Read the tips below and incorporate as many of them as possible into your life.

Note: I’m not a medical doctor

Just a quick reminder. Yes, I go by Dr. K, and I’ve had a passion for learning as much as I can about medical issues, especially when it comes to natural ways to stay healthy. BUT I’m not a physician nor a medical professional, and I don’t dispense “medical advice.” My doctorate is in linguistics!

Then again, I do know a LOT about medical issues. I’m a total geek when it comes to learning about what to do to stay or get healthy. In fact, I’m a walking encyclopedia of alternative health information. Just realize that your mileage may vary, and that my information is not meant to replace any medical advice and care you may be receiving from your own medical team.

If you have any serious health conditions, be sure to speak to your doctor before you take any of the recommended supplements, especially garlic and ginger, which can have a blood thinning effect.

The key to avoiding getting sick in winter: A strong immune system

At the root of staying well is a strong immune system, and you can do a lot to keep yours strong and healthy. So let’s look at some of the basics of keeping your immune system is in fine shape:

1) Take care of yourself

The most important part of keeping your immune system strong and healthy is taking care of yourself. I bet you know that, but it won’t hurt to review the basics and remind yourself of the things you should do…

a) Get enough sleep

Yup. That’s one of the most important ones. Your body needs sleep to function well, and especially to stay healthy. If you want to get sick really fast, simply cut down on sleep drastically and THEN hang out with coughing and sneezing people.

That’s one of the reasons why lots of people get sick during long plane trips. First they skimp on sleep to get ready. Then, the trip across time zones will mess up their sleep patterns, which means they miss more sleep. And then, there are the germs…

b) Keep stress levels low

Some people believe that those who complain about stress are wimps. But people who work on avoiding stress or at least on keeping it contained, are very wise! Stress really can make you sick, in part because it weakens your immune system. It also messes with our entire endocrine system.

So do what you can to lower your stress levels! Take some time to figure out which things in your life are causing the most stress and make whatever changes you can. And then, there are a wealth of strategies to help your body cope better with whatever stress is left. I assembled a lot of my favorites in my Instant Stress Relief Strategies guide!

c) Eat well and consume enough liquids

Next, be sure to eat “real” food, especially fruits and vegetables, and avoid processed food with weird chemicals as much as possible. And when I say it’s good to consume enough liquids, I am referring especially to warm and hot liquids, like tea and soups. Your body will thank you.

A hot rum toddy is probably okay, but don’t overdo it. Instead, focus on chicken soup. It really has proven to be good for you.

d) Get some fresh air and exercise

It’s also important to get some fresh air and sunshine if at all possible. It’s good for your body and your spirit too. And when I mean exercise, I don’t necessarily mean intense workouts, but do get moving on a daily basis.

e) Supplements to help you avoid getting sick

These are my personal recommendations… Do check with your medical team to make sure none of them conflict with any prescription medications you may take.

In addition to a good multi, you should make sure you get enough of the following, either in the form of food or as supplements:

Garlic
Vitamin D3
Vitamin C
NAC (n-acetyl-cystine)
Olive leaf extract

The last two made a big difference when I added them to my line-up of supplements.

2) What to do if you feel a cold coming on?

When you feel a cold coming on, in the form of sniffles or a scratchy throat, it’s time to take some additional measures. There are some additional supplements you can take that will help your body fight off that cold. And if you haven’t been very diligent about taking the ones listed above, now’s the time to start taking them daily.

a) Supplements to help you get better fast

If you’re already starting with the sniffles, you may be able to keep them from growing into a full-fledged cold. Here are a few things to do in addition to those you’ve been doing to keep your immune system strong. First of all, increase your garlic immediately, and add a few extra supplements:

More garlic, fresh and/or in supplement form
Ginger
Goldenseal
Ecchinacea
Elderberry
Zink

I also keep some Airborne fizzy tablets around and take one or two a day when I’m in danger of coming down with something, for example when I’m stressed or worn out, especially when I’m also going to be in close proximity of people who are already sick. There’s a reason why it was first developed for air travel and school teachers.

And I definitely take it immediately when I feel the first signs of sniffles. It has a good dose of Vitamin C and zink, plus several other immune strengthening ingredients.

There’s another excellent supplement I tend to take immediately at the first sign of cold symptoms and it usually gets things nipped in the bud before the cold has a chance to blossom into the full thing:

Gaia Herbs “Quick Defense”

This one is so good that I make sure that I always have it handy. If I end up not getting sick until it is way after its expiration date, I consider it a good investment in my ongoing health…

Sort of like the umbrella principle. When you carry an umbrella with you, it’s much less likely to rain than when you don’t (provided you live in a climate where rain is a regular possibility).

You may also want to take a combo that includes garlic, ginger, goldenseal, and other immune strengthening herbs. I like the one by Futurebiotics.

One thing I find very helpful is Vick’s VapoRub ointment, which I apply to my chest, my upper back, and also to the soles of my feet. It seems to do amazing things.

Yes, I could go on and on, but these will get you started.

b) Chicken soup on steroids

And here’s my favorite secret weapon: chicken soup spiked with fresh chopped garlic and ginger, and also some chopped green onions. You might also want to add some Cayenne pepper, or some chopped peppers of your choice (go easy on those). Have it several times during the day. It works great.

Won’t it give you garlic breath? Well, yes, it will. But since you want to keep your distance from potential carriers of cold and flu viruses, I consider that a good thing…

c) Get lots of rest

Here’s another key to getting better, or preventing your initial sniffles from getting worse: Get lots of rest.
Have your spiked chicken soup, slather yourself in Vick’s VapoRub, and take a nap or three.

Can’t sleep? Read a book you’ve been meaning to get to, or do some puzzles or whatever you enjoy doing when you’re not feeling so hot.

Hope the cold germs will stay clear of you, but if they don’t, the strategies above should help.

As always, if you feel worse and are running a very high fever, do see your medical professional!

WARNING: If you are on blood thinning medication, be sure to speak to your doctor before taking garlic and ginger, since these can interact with your blood thinning drugs and could lead to overdose.

Eldon Taylor’s “Gotcha!” Review – A Truly Eye-Opening Read!

If you already know that you’re being lied to just about every day, and that advertising is aiming to make you feel deficient in all sorts of ways, you may not be surprised. If you prefer not to know, don’t read this book.

I definitely prefer to know, though, and have made it my business to keep up with at least SOME issues, especially in the medical arena. But as I was reading Eldon Taylor’s massive collection of Gotchas, I found a lot I hadn’t known about.

Arsenic in chicken meat? Who knew!

Doctors prescribing placebos to patients? For real?

Mercury in amalgam fillings? Well, I knew that, and I’m refusing to let my dentist add any more of those things. But you keep reading that they’re basically harmless. At least in the “official” literature. And my dentist says so too.

I was less surprised by the examples of mind control in advertising and political writing/speech. After all, I’m a linguist, and we linguists made it our business to analyze that type of thing. And I spent many years teaching my students to do the same.

Still, Taylor takes it all to a whole new level.

Reading page after page of his examples made me feel quite ill.

So how does it fit with his other books?

Those were about self-empowerment, at least the way I saw them. Using self-hypnosis to achieve ones goals, and grow ones self esteem.

Well, this one is definitely about self-empowerment as well. It’s just approaching things from a different angle.

The principle here is clear though: Information is power.

And Taylor offers a massive expose of all the nasty ways we’re being fooled by a slew of powers that be. In most of the cases discussed in this book, the information is so “unpleasant” and/or scary that some of us would rather not know about it.

If you prefer to focus on what YOU can do, you may even want to skip ahead to the last chapter before diving into all the gory details. There you’ll find something more positive and hopeful: Specific action steps that help you take back your power.

Taylor gives the phrase “mindful living” a whole new meaning. It’s at the heart of bringing about change, and making the world a better and more humane place.

And so, after hundreds of pages about various aspects of how we’re being fooled and controlled, and how the various techniques work – and the kinds of experiments that have been conducted to make that mind-control ever more powerful), there it is. A long and detailed chapter on what we can do about it.

And yes, mindfulness is at the heart of it. We need to pay attention. And speak up.

Eldon Taylor’s new book “Gotcha” is a truly eye-opening must-read for anyone who wants to know the truth and take back control of his or her own life. Knowledge is power. And to reclaim it, we will have to face a lot of ugly truths.

Funny Work Quotes – For Labor Day And Beyond

Funny work quotes – it’s interesting to see what people find funny about work. Or not so funny.

As I was looking for funny Labor Day work quotes for a client’s daily quotes series, I came across some very amusing – and thought-provoking – quotes.

And so, I’m going to share some of those funny work quotes with you and comment about what they say about us and our relationship with work…

Funny Work Quotes – “Necessary Evil”

“When a man tells you
that he got rich through hard work,
ask him: ‘Whose?”
– Don Marquis

“Work spares us from three evils:
boredom, vice, and need”
– Voltaire

All I’ve ever wanted was an honest week’s pay
for an honest day’s work.
– Steve Martin

The world is full of willing people;
some willing to work,
the rest willing to let them.
– Robert Frost

“The best way to appreciate your job
is to imagine yourself without one.”
– Oscar Wilde
.

Funny Work Quotes – Curious stuff about work

If it weren’t for the last minute,
nothing would get done…
– Anonymous

“How can I think outside the box
when I work inside a cube?”
– Found on a coffee mug

“Nobody notices what I do.. until I don’t do it.”
– Also found on a coffee mug

Funny Work Quotes – How to get OUT of “work”

“Tell your boss what you really think about him
and the truth shall set you free.”
– Patrick Murray

“I love my boss,
I love my job,
I’m self employed”
– Anonymous

“Executive ability is deciding quickly
and getting somebody else to do the work”.
– John G. Pollard

“If you don’t want to work,
you have to work to earn enough money
so that you won’t have to work.”
– Ogden Nash

“I always try to go the extra mile at work,
but my boss always finds me
and brings me back.”
– Anonymous

make money from home

Funny Work Quotes – Taxes

“America is a land of taxation
that was founded to avoid taxation.”
– Laurence J. Peter

“Why does a slight tax increase
cost you two hundred dollars
and a substantial tax cut
save you thirty cents?”
– Peg Bracken

“Did you ever notice
that when you put the words ‘The’ and ‘IRS’ together,
it spells ‘THEIRS?'”
– Author Unknown

“Taxes:
Of life’s two certainties,
the only one for which you can get
an automatic extension.”
– Author Unknown

“A fine is a tax for doing something wrong.
A tax is a fine for doing something right.”
– Author Unknown

My Commentary on Funny Work Quotes

It was fun looking (and especially finding) all those funny work quotes. And there are lots more where those came from.

What does that tell us about work? Quite a few of us don’t like much what we do for a living. And even when we do, the pay may not be what would make it all worth our while – but we’ve got to eat.

So what can we do about that?

Figure out what we REALLY would like to do!

The question is – is that because we do work we don’t like, or because we just don’t like working.

Confucius said….

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

I partially agree – it’s a good idea to have a job you love. But don’t think it won’t be work. In my years as a professor, I used to resent it when people told me they didn’t think reading and writing was work – after all I liked reading.

But when you HAVE to read certain stuff, and on deadline, it’s work, no matter how enjoyable the actual activity may be under different circumstances.

Still, doing what you love is really a key part of making your work and your life successful. You’ll be unlikely to get really good at and enthusiastic about something you hate.

So let’s find a way to make a living doing what we love…

UPDATE: Coming up soon – a special report to help you figure out the perfect job for you. Please come back in a few days.

And if you’re sure you’d rather work for yourself, the following report will get you started:

Make Money in your Jammies

In the meantime, I hope you had a great Labor Day Weekend (and enjoyed my funny work quotes)!

Elisabeth

How to make yourself feel better

feel better fastHow to make yourself feel better, lift your spirits and raise your vibration?

That’s a tall order, especially if you’re NOT feeling so hot. But the key to get out of any kind of funk is to feel better FIRST.

And yes, that’s very annoying when you’re in the middle of it. I used to consider it my right to be grumpy when I wanted to be, and got a bit angry at people who told me to “smile.”

I mean, I was a crusader for the right to be grumpy! When I first moved to California from Germany, I had a hard time with people telling me to have a nice day when I was feeling lonely and depressed and overworked to boot.

Well, that was then. Meanwhile, I’ve learned… that the way to feel better is to feel better FIRST, and then things will get better.

In fact, I first started to get really serious about learning that when I had breast cancer about 18 years ago. I learned from Lawrence LeShan and his amazing book, “Cancer as a Turning Point” how important it is to be happy in order to make the immune system work effectively.

I loved the way he put it (approximately): Why would the immune system go to bat for me when I was miserable? It would do me a favor if it would just help me get out of my misery.

Uhm, not so good. I decided I wanted to stay alive, and if it took getting happy to do that, I was going to be happy.

I was quite determined. And so I deliberately sought out “positive aspects” (which I now re-encountered in Abraham-Hicks) in everything, from the city in whcih I lived to my job to even the cancer.

And it must have worked. 18 years later, I’m still here, and feeling pretty darn good.

Now, I have lots more tools.

Here are just a few that I use on a regular basis, complete with some books that I consult:

1) Asking myself, “So what DO I want?”

When I’m feeling stressed, unhappy, whatever, and I can just FEEL that I’m driving the good stuff away, it’s so important to change my vibration and my thoughts (and feelings). Or the other way round.

Anyway, so I remind myself of what I want to drown out my anxiety and the “what ifs” and it usually works quite well.

2) Meditate

I meditate fairly regularly. Not terribly formally, but it seems to help.

One of the meditations I do is the Body Mind Spirit Integration Meditation I learned during my Quantum Touch training. It helps me calm down and if I do it at night, it helps me go to sleep.

And I also listen A LOT to my Abraham Hicks Getting into the Vortex Meditation. I find it so calming and it really does raise my vibration and gets me into the vortex, whatever that is.

Just kidding. I think it’s that space where we are in alignment with who we really are and stop putting up resistance to what we want. And it just plain feels good.

Another couple of great calming and mood lifting audios are Doreen Virtue’s “Manifesting with the Angels” meditation, and Jon Gabriel’s evening meditation (the morning one too, but the evening one is longer and goes deeper).

3) Positive Aspects

The exercise of finding positive aspects to EVERYTHING. Tough to do, but it works wonders. I wish I had learned to do that a long time ago, or continued to do it after I recovered from cancer. Thanks to Abraham-Hicks, I do it now.

4) Emotional Scale

This is really one of my powertools. When everything fails, tsitting down and writing statements that work their way up the emotional scale is amazingly effective.

5) EFT

Yes, EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. One of its most powerful applications is as a mood lifter. It helps tone down and even eliminate negative emotions and blocks, and with that frees up space for good feelings.

6) Prayer

Yes, prayer works very well. Whether you pray by yourself or wtih others, or for others, it is a powerful healer.


7) Exercise/walks in nature

Get moving, preferably outdoors, preferably during daylight hours. I can tell the difference when I skip it for a day.

8) Hugs etc.

Human touch. Or even cuddling with your pet. It releases the hormon oxytocin and lowers stress as well as blood pressure.

I have a free ebook(let) with 7 Stress tips that you can find here:

Free Stress Tips

And, by the way, if you want to check out my Breast Cancer poems, you can do that here:

Breast Cancer Poems

Want my guide to EFT? Just try to leave my website, and you’ll get a pop-up window that will offer it to you for free. Click “Cancel” and then claim your Easy Intro to EFT.

Or go to EasyEFT.info

So when it comes to raising your vibrations or lifting your spirits, you have lots of options. Just pick one you like and go for it.

To your health and happiness!

Elisabeth