why the stars are saying “quit sugar” now (Yasmin Boland guest posts!)

Ever come across Yasmin Boland‘s astrological insights? The other day she wrote about how things right now are primed for quitting sugar. Or, more to the point, right now we can’t tolerate sugar….we’re all wanting to quit. Which would explain why a few of you have quite liked my  I Quit Sugar ebook. Which, by the way, is still $15. You can catch up on the health changes and weight loss others have experienced here.

Picture 312 why the stars are saying "quit sugar" now (Yasmin Boland guest posts!)
photo via browneyedbellejulie.blogspot.com

So. Yasmin very kindly offered to explain the deal… it’s fun and weird and got me thinking in different directions. I thought you’d like to know about it, too. Basically, Yasmin reckons we are in the biggest Smash Sugar Forever cycle that we’ve been in for 30 years, which is the length of one Saturn cycle. And Saturn is the planet of wisdom and hard facts and truths.
I’ve asked Yasmin to share a little more:

“In astrology, every planet represents certain qualities or parts of life. Saturn is about teaching and wisdom among other things. Saturn is the mean old headmaster and the strict parent, as well as the representative of the truth in the horoscope. Right now it is in the sign of sweetness Libra. Just as with the planets, each sign governs certain parts of life. Libra is about balance and harmony, art and luxury. And sweetness, including anything made of sugar.

If you’re wondering how these classifications came about, the short answer is that astrologers have observed the movements of the planets for literally thousands of years and noted what happens when and how it coincides with events on the planet and in peoples’ lives. This is Astrology 101. If you want to know more, delve into Secrets From A Stargazer’s Notebook by the awesome Debbi Kempton-Smith.

This Saturn in Libra transit continues until October 2012. (If you happen to be a Libran, now you know why the past couple of years have been so intense! The harder you work between now until October next year, the easier the rest of this Saturn in Libra transit will be).

So if you take the keywords for Saturn and Libra, it’s easy to see that Sarah really has tapped into the skies.

We are all learning (Saturn is all about learning) the truth (Saturn is all about truth) about sugar (Libra is all about sugar) and it’s not pretty (Libra is all about All Things Pretty).

The truth about sugar is coming out. I’ve even read that sugar is more addictive than crack. People who give it up say they feel amazing. It’s everywhere and it’s hard to kick. However since I found out that the food industry actually puts sugar into our foods as a way of hooking us, it’s become a little easier to just say no.

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creating too much chaos in your life? this jonathan fields trick works

This week in Sunday Life I drop certainty anchors

mind on fire creating too much chaos in your life? this jonathan fields trick works
By mind on fire

So lately I’ve become increasingly distrustful of the overly certain.

When someone puffs out their chest at the head of a dinner table to emphatically declare climate change isn’t happening or that their son will grow up to follow Collingwood or that the only smoked small goods worth buying are from such-and-such-purveyor-of-such-things, it sets off alarm bells. Because nothing is certain any more. No one knows anything for sure.

We can’t be certain we’ll knock off work at 5 tomorrow or that we’ll be having Irish stew on Wednesday night or that our plane will turn up. The only certainty, beyond death, is uncertainty. Oh, and the fact that uncertainty in the world is on the up and up.

So when a leader or some blinkered commentator issues a black or white pronouncement these days I immediately think, “Hmmm, you’re sooo struggling with the inevitable anxiety of these doubtful times”. Far from giving them credibility, their surety comes across as cringefully out of step. As evolutionary epistemologist Jeremy Sherman wrote recently, today “self-certainty is weakly correlated with veracity.”

Uncertainty is the new fear. Twenty years ago we felt fear and did it anyway.

Now we accept we don’t know, and use this to humbly grow ourselves forward. 

Or at least we do if we know what’s good for us. The research shows, over and over, that uncertainty – or an ability to flow with it – goes hand in hand with true creative success. It’s the very act of being in the unknown that sees us strive to know more, and thus stumble upon fresh ideas.

What distinguishes the new entrepreneurs from the rest of us who sit back waiting for our “moment” is an appreciation that we can no longer wait for a perfect understanding of a situation before acting. As Jonathan Fields, author of new book Uncertainty, reasons, “The only time we have perfect understanding before launching into something is when it’s already been done before”.

I spoke to Fields this week. He became so fascinated by this new not-knowing that he studied hundreds of successful creatives to determine what they were doing differently, culminating in his book, published this month. What did he find? “Happy, successful entrepreneurs ritualize everything in their lives but their creative work.”

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how is the quitting sugar thing going for you?

I’d love your thoughts…it’s been almost four weeks since I released the I Quit Sugar ebook and I was just wondering how you’ve been finding it. Any questions? Any results? Please do feel free to share. Fellow bloggers, is the affiliates program working for you? From my end, it’s been so heartening to see how … Read more

Friday giveaway: free institute of integrative nutrition course worth $4500

It’s Friday. And I’d like to give a lovely reader: free tuition with the Institute of Integrative Nutrition worth more than $4000   when they buy a copy of the  I Quit Sugar ebook between now and Monday EST 5pm. As you might know, the INN course saw me qualify as a Health Coach last … Read more

8 things to learn about being creative from Wendy Harmer (a podcast)

I’ve decided to start an occasional series with creative people I admire who have a spark of unique “dive-into-life”-ness that I think we could all learn from. There. A long sentence for you.

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Image by Tierney Gearon

Wendy Harmer is my first such guest. She is a MASSIVE spirit and her impact in Australia is huge. She’s a comedian, teen fiction writer, memoirist, blogger (you must sign up to Hoopla – smart women contributors talking important water cooler stuff) and…the rest. She’s playful and she creates from a very true and honest space. The best kind. I loved chatting with her about how she does what she does. Her words helped me enormously….mostly because she is so positive and accepting of the process. She plays. She explores.

Anyway, listen in.

[display_podcast]

Some of the salient mantras and points I took:

* She used to dive into big new things thinking “everyone will be much better than me”. Over time she’s realised no one really knows what they’re doing…they’re all just trying. “Most people are being average”.

* She always wanted to edit a magazine. So. She created Hoopla. Because now the internet means you just. Can. Very true and good for anyone with dreams they haven’t fulfilled yet.

* When she gets a bit nervous she says to herself: “I don’t have to do this for a living”. Bam. Expectations lessened!

* She works 9am-3pm. Sometimes she only gets 3 paragraphs down. Sometimes she scraps the lot the next day. 500 words a day is about fair, to her mind. Phew…

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this could be why you’re 30-something and single…and OK about it

This is a doozie of an article that I just read in The Atlantic. We all like chatting about this stuff: the disconnect between men and women today and the peculiar place both single men and women in their 30s are in. It’s such a HUGE issue and we all try to grapple with the reasons, the ways forwards etc. Wondered why it’s such a barbeque stopper? Read on…

128220 7 600 this could be why you're 30-something and single...and OK about it
Image by Tierney Gearon

I’ve written about this stuff many times before, how women give away their feminine power and some other discussions here and here on the current relationship biso.

The Atlantic article by Kate Bolick is worth a read in full, but I thought I’d pull out some points that sparked debates in my own head. Take a deep breath:

What’s happening now on the relationship landscape is monumental, just to be sure:

“The transformation is momentous—immensely liberating and immensely scary. When it comes to what people actually want and expect from marriage and relationships, and how they organize their sexual and romantic lives, all the old ways have broken down.”

Bolick outlines in great detail how women’s wages are increasing more than men’s (in the US), are more educated etc than men, and cites the various reports on “the end of men” (which is a bigger issue in the US where the GFC hit male professions mostly):

If, in all sectors of society, women are on the ascent, and if gender parity is actually within reach, this means that a marriage regime based on men’s overwhelming economic dominance may be passing into extinction.

Or to quote Gloria Steinham: “We’re becoming the men we wanted to marry.” I see this everywhere. But I don’t know that it’s doing us any favours – it’s defeminising women and emasculating men and confusing the whole equation. But Bolick provides this:

Now that women are financially independent, and marriage is an option rather than a necessity, we are free to pursue what the British sociologist Anthony Giddens termed the “pure relationship,” in which intimacy is sought in and of itself and not solely for reproduction.

Now that we can pursue our own status and security, and are therefore liberated from needing men the way we once did, we are free to like them more, or at least more idiosyncratically, which is how love ought to be, isn’t it?

One would think so, but….Behold “the new scarcity”:

American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity. Even as women have seen their range of options broaden in recent years—for instance, expanding the kind of men it’s culturally acceptable to be with, and making it okay not to marry at all—the new scarcity disrupts what economists call the “marriage market” in a way that in fact narrows the available choices, making a good man harder to find than ever.

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10 ways to sweeten food without sugar

Well, my I Quit Sugar ebook has been on sale now for 3 weeks. So, there’s a bunch of you who’ve already seen results. Picture 25 10 ways to sweeten food without sugar

Here’s some of what you’ve been saying:

“I can’t believe how many tasty foods there are that don’t have any sugar!” Kerry

“I’m in week 3 of I Quit Sugar – feeling really good and skin is clearer and brighter, whoo!” Jasmine

“I have been sugar free for five days now. I am starting to experience that clarity that you and so many others have talked about, and it is a nice place to be – instead of thinking about chocolate and biscuits all the time!” Sally

One of the main tricks I share for quitting sugar is to get used to using other sweeteners (but only healthy ones). In I Quit Sugar, I share recipes and supply a shopping list of things to keep in your cupboard. Funnily, Huffington Post recently ran a list of simiilar sweeteners, some of which I’ve included here…

  • crushed berries…instead of jam. Crush some fresh or frozen berries (perhaps with a little stevia; I find frozen ones work) and spread on toast.
  • vanilla powder… with yoghurt instead of icecream. In my ebook I share other tips, including where to buy the stuff.
  • cinnamon…instead of sugar in your coffee. Try adding a dash of it to coffee as it brews. Toss it into the french press or coffee maker and let it infuse into the grinds.
  • coconut flesh and flakes...to sweeten porridge.
  • licorice root tea…in chocolate treats and baked things. A small teaspoon of the root (ie not after it’s made up into tea) adds instant sweetness.

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my chat with Deepak Chopra…real deal or frantically caught up?

This week my body travels, I stay home

90795 8 468 my chat with Deepak Chopra...real deal or frantically caught up?

Sometimes, in the course of writing this column, I come across a breed of self-helper I can only describe as disenchantingly full of it. Edward de Bono is one such (sorry to be so frank, Lateral Thinking fans). Then there are those who, well, I just can’t seem to put a finger on them – are they the real deal or do they simply have a book/webcast /workshop to flog?

Deepak Chopra, possibly the most well known mind-body and spirituality guru in the world, is one such.

I met Chopra during his recent Australian visit. He was running ludicrously on time. In fact two minutes early. And so, as I stood waiting to be greeted, he filled the 120 seconds tap-tapping wildly on his phone. When done, he immediately pointed out we’d spoken before. We had 18 months ago. How the hell did he remember? And what a bugger he did. Because back then I also struggled to get a grip of the guy, and so never wrote up the interview. I got the feeling he knew this, too.

I’d followed Chopra on Twitter, but had to unfollow him after a week – his updates were relentless and mind-boggling frenetic, passionate sprays at critics interspersed with conscious-raising inspira-bombs. Which, to my mind, jarred with his calm, centred, non-attached Perfect Health messages that I’ve always found so compelling in his books.

And I guess this is at the knobby kernel of my un-ease: how can the dude preach one thing and seem to live by another?

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get your stuff sorted

You’ve heard of The Story of Stuff Project? I’ve mentioned it a bit here, especially in regards to the story of stuff in cosmetics.

It’s a movement helping us all to consume less stuff. Because we don’t need it, it makes us unhappy and, frankly, it’s killing us. I grew up with these messages from my parents and then was exposed to the opposite extreme during me time editing Cosmopolitan magazine. I went from a niaive lack of engagement in consumption… to total abhorrence of it. Our eternal grasping for stuff is upsetting. It upsets us.

Anyway. If you haven’t seen The Story of Stuff, here it is below OR, come see Annie Leonard, the chick in the video and behind the project, in person. She’s in Australia next week. I’ve posted the dates below.

Good and important… stuff. Book in to hear her talk!

Wednesday, October 26th
Time: 6.00 PM for 7.00 PM
Location: Mullum Civic Hall – Dalley Street,  Mullumbimby
Cost: $10/12 at the Door, food and drink available
RSVP to [email protected]
Hosted by the National Toxics Network

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when failure is totally an option

This is an ad for a global sneaker brand, I know. And it’s been, no doubt, developed by a team of brand psychologists who conspire to manipulate the human mind for consumerist outcome.

But.

Gosh, it’s good and touching.

We need to hear from other people – especially people we regard as successful  – about how they failed more than they succeeded. For two reasons.

So we know success isn’t something magical and based on luck. That it’s about hard work. And we can all do hard work, right?

And also to remind us that we ONLY succeed by going DOWN into failure. Going down means we then build up “success strength” in the grapple back out. Going down buys us the time to know what we’re doing. Going down cements what we really want (because you have to have something to aim for when you grapple back out). Going down means when we succeed, we’re the real deal, not just a fluke.

To really get the message, you need to see this, too:

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