The Global Conversation

Tag: Conversations with God

  • Choose to be healthy NOW

    Are you surprised when you have low energy or when you are tired and listless? Are you aware that you could easily be more productive, stress-free, and healthier starting today, right now? All you have to do is choose to be healthy instead of continuing to choose the opposite. Everytime you eat or drink something, it is totally your own choice, and you probably know how it will make you feel.

    Today, let’s look at some ways you can choose good health today, right NOW.

    Choose plant-based. Choose plants over animals. You don’t have to be 100% vegan or vegetarian unless you have health issues. Choose plants 90% of time if you need to. If you choose animal products, know where they came from and how the animals were treated. Stick to animal products such as yogurt, honey, and eggs instead of flesh if you can. Do a little research and find out how corporate animal farmers actually treat their animals. You will be appalled. The senseless torture and inhumane practices used to butcher animals is not what your God, my God, or anyone else’s God intended. Choose not to be ignorant about how your animal products came about.

    Choose whole. Choose whole foods. Instead of purchasing processed foods in boxes and bags, or pre-prepared foods, prepare your own meals using whole foods! Stop ordering food for delivery and stop going to restaurants so much! Increase what you know about the food you are eating by preparing it yourself. There are super-simple, quick recipes you will love and can make. Find them. Make up your own recipes from foods that you like. Of course you may have to experiment, but once you have it figured out, you are set for life!

    Choose local. Support your local farmers. Choose products that have been grown locally. Even if you can’t find or afford organic produce, choose local produce. This will boost your local economy and at the same time reduce the income going to big business, GMO-filled, super-agricultural companies. We were meant to eat what is grown right around us! Try every locally grown fruit and vegetable you can find! Join a Consumer Supported Agricultural (CSA) group and find out what you have been missing. REAL FOOD has super taste and so many more nutrients, vitamins, and minerals than everything else. Experience it for yourself and you will make new choices!

    Choose what you know is the right thing to do. You already know what is the right thing to do. Stop making poor choices for lazy or unconsciously self-sabotaging reasons. DECIDE TODAY THAT YOU WILL MAKE GOOD FOOD CHOICES AND DO IT WITHOUT EXCEPTION. If you don’t, you are choosing disease, every time you make a poor choice.

    In Conversations with God, Book 1, we learned that people are making themselves sick, and “Most people do so quite unconsciously. (They don’t even know what they’re doing.) So when they get sick, they don’t know what hit them. It feels as though something has befallen them, rather than that they did something to themselves.

     This occurs because most people move through life—not simply health issues and consequences – unconsciously.”

    Choose to be conscious. Choose to be healthy today!

     (Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth offers holistic health coaching to individuals and groups via internet, phone, or face-to-face visit. Contact Beth for a consultation. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)

  • Reminding children about self-love

    Have you ever watched a young child look in the mirror? They are mesmerized with what they see! They make goofy faces, smile and giggle…but you do not see them looking at themselves with criticism or derision. You don’t hear many four-year-olds say “my nose is too big” or “my eyes are too narrow.” Children do not learn these concepts until other people teach them to feel that way about themselves.

    In recent years, the cosmetic company, Dove, has embarked on a “Social Mission” to increase the self-esteem of females. As part of this larger mission, they recently conducted a campaign called “Real Beauty Sketches.” The basic idea was that they surreptitiously paired strangers for a brief time and then had each person sit with a forensic sketch artist to create drawings of one of the participants. The drawings that resulted from the self-descriptions were much more critical — and far less accurate — than the descriptions given by the strangers, even though they had only met for a brief period. I wonder what this says about us, as a species, that others see us more clearly than we see ourselves.

    Before proceeding, I feel two things bear clarification: first, I wish Dove would include boys; it is just as important for them to value themselves as girls. Second, I feel the point is not to focus on physical beauty as a status symbol or that there is some arbitrary level of perfection to which to aspire. My point is that every human being, no matter the gender, color, size, shape, ethnicity, and/or level of perfection based on societal standards, is perfect and should feel perfect when looking in the mirror. Every child deserves to love what he or she sees in him or her SELF.

    So what can we, as parents, do about it? We can put our children in a bubble until they turn 18 so that society never teaches them negative stories about themselves! Oh wait, that won’t work? Darn! Hmm. You really want to make me think on this one then, don’t you?

    I have, personally, tried to limit my own negative self-talk in front of my child because I know that she is learning how to view herself through how she understands my view of myself. But I think that is only part of the puzzle.

    What we can do is apply the principles of Conversations with God to our interactions with our children in a way which will help them to grow up confident and secure in their inner beauty, their inner connection to God, and their inner knowing of their value and place in the Universe. My goal would be to help children to know that they do not have to internalize the ideas others have about them. Some concepts that may be helpful are:

    We are all one – This might help your child to overcome feelings of pain if other children taunt or ostracize him or her for being, looking, or sounding different. Remembering that you are connected to the All, even in the face of others being mean to you, can help you to feel that you are not alone.

    Love is all there is – Remembering to love yourself, even when others are not showing you love is huge in remembering your perfection. It is also helpful if you can, in the face of being hurt by someone, be love back to them instead of reacting back in meanness. It helps you stop the cycle of meanness. You may even change their mind about how to treat someone! And there is nothing more beautiful to anyone than love shining through.

    No human beings are better than other human beings – This concept is typically used on the context of the fallacies of life and how human try to separate themselves from each other, finding reasons to produce conflict, killing and war. However, I find that it is applicable here because to assess beauty in societal terms is to classify some as better than others. If we can teach children from a young age that differences in facial or body features do not equate to better or worse, they just mean different, then children will not judge their own beauty according to the standards of others. Instead, they will see their beauty as inherent, internal and all-encompassing.

    Children come into this world feeling love, promise and open to possibilities. They only learn about limits from what they are told and experience. We can help them learn to overcome society’s limits by fostering a deep sense of self-love and connection to God from a young age.

    Hopefully, through these small efforts we can help our children to see the beauty we see in them, long into adulthood!

    (Emily A. Filmore is the Creative Co-Director of www.cwgforparents.com. She is also the author/illustrator of the “With My Child” Series of books about bonding with your child through everyday activities.  Her books are available at www.withmychildseries.com. To contact Emily, please email her at Emily@cwgforparents.com.)

  • No more hurting people

    I can think of no wiser words than those that 8-year-old Martin Richard scrawled in brightly colored markers on a poster for one of his school assignments:

    “no more hurting people”

    However, as perceptive and hope-filled as his short and powerful message was, ironically Martin Richard’s life on earth came to an abrupt end at the Boston Marathon while he excitedly waited for his father to cross the finish line, not knowing that a bomb was placed within a short distance of him and his family by someone who had the specific intent of doing the very thing he was championing against:  hurting people.

    The utterance of these four words “no more hurting people” should cause us to pause and put some serious thought into where it is as a world we want to go – and how we are going to get there.  Martin’s call for peace is one that we have an opportunity to carry the torch forward on.  Does anybody out there feel a responsibility to at least make an effort to see to it that a world like the one that this young child envisioned and yearned for will one day be a reality not only for a handful of people, but for all of Humanity?

    o-MARTIN-RICHARD-DEAD-BOSTON-MARATHON-570

    If even the youngest in our society are choosing to be part of the change, what will you choose to do?

    If even the most innocent in our world are stepping up and declaring their thoughts and ideas, what will you declare?

    If even the most vulnerable among us have the courage to demonstrate Who They Are, who will you demonstrate yourself to be?

    In the process of answering these questions, we may find ourselves wondering if God has anything to say about any of this.  Conversations with God tells us that God talks to everyone.  All the time.  The question is not to whom does God talk, but who listens?

    Are we willing to consider the possibility that one of the ways in which God is speaking to us right here, right now, is through this bright young man named Martin Richard?  Perhaps in the same way that She spoke through another young man almost 2,000 years ago named Jesus?

    If we are willing to consider that possibility, then the bigger question for each and every one of us to consider is: Are we going to listen — and stop hurting people?

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • ReConnect. ReMember. ReCreate.

    Stark.  Gray.  Cold.  Inanimate.  Apathetic.

    These are just a handful of words which describe the bleak environment inside the concrete walls of Fishkill Correctional Institute in New York, a space reserved for those in society whose behaviors have resulted in a loss of their personal freedom, and in some cases an irreversible sentence of a lifetime behind bars.  These particular individuals are the castaways, the unredeemable, the lost causes.  They are the uncompassionate, the unfeeling, the disconnected.  These are the men for whom society has given up all hope for, categorically labeling them as “impossible to rehabilitate.”

    Thankfully, Glorida Gilbert Stoga, in collaboration with veterinarian Dr. Thomas Lane, did not believe these blanket generalizations to be true and moved into action by creating a revolutionary program called “Puppies Behind Bars,” providing these forsaken men an opportunity to experience what has been largely denied to them by society:  a second chance.

    This organization places puppies with inmates in prison as part of a program to train these dogs to become guide dogs for returning injured service men and women, law enforcement officers who have been injured in the line of duty, and disabled children and adults.  The puppies spend 16 months with their assigned inmate, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, where they are trained and cared for until the day the dogs are presented to their new family.

    As difficult as it is for these men to say goodbye to these beautiful animals with whom they have developed strong bonds and unique relationships, they have each said that the opportunity they were given to connect to a side of themselves they have forgotten they had the capacity to experience is immeasurable.   By engaging in a relationship whose intended purpose and outcome is to help someone else, these inmates are discovering that their lives are not about them – at least not in the way they had so far imagined it to be.  And through the path of service and compassion, giving back to a world that perhaps they have thus far only taken from, they have been given the greatest opportunity to remember and to experience who they really are.

    If a man who has done the unthinkable — perhaps even someone who has taken the life of another human being — can remember how to love and how to feel compassion again through the tiny life of a puppy, don’t we ALL have the ability to begin again and to recreate ourselves anew in any given moment?

    The other exciting aspect to this story is the fact that someone just like you, just like me, created this wonderful program simply from an idea, a thought.  And instead of burying it in a sea of doubts, fears, and apprehensions, she chose the action love sponsors and is changing the lives of thousands of people for the better by taking the first step.  I hope this story serves as an inspiration to you, as it did for me, to move into what’s next.  Life really does begin “at the edge of your comfort zone, as the messages of Conversations with God advise us.  If you already thought you would succeed, if you were already guaranteed to “win,” would you go for it?  Would you take the jump?

    What then would you be allowed to know about who you really are and why you are really here?

    Note:  The Conversations with God Foundation also sponsors a CwG Prison Outreach program in order to share the message of the Conversations with God books with people in jails and prisons, places of darkness where its light is most needed, empowering prisoners to spread the CwG message in their own facilities and to live this message so that they can effect change within their own sphere.  For more information about how you can be involved in this wonderful outreach, click here:

    CwG Prison Outreach

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • Holistic Health Part 3 – Nourish Yourself

    In Conversations with God, Book 1, we learn that “…all illness is self-created. Even conventional medical doctors are now seeing how people make themselves sick.” 

    Let’s look at what you need to do in order to get healthy, stay healthy, and stop making yourself sick.

    There are three basic steps you have to take for stellar holistic health. If you are vigilant and careful, you can improve your own health, reduce occurrence of illness, heal yourself, and start feeling great! First you must cleanse and detoxify your body, inside and outside. Get rid of the toxins that are hanging around in your intestines, clogging your arteries, wearing out your organs, and causing symptoms. You must also detoxify your mind, thoughts and relationships. Second, you must learn to avoid toxins in everything possible from food, beauty products, air, water, household cleaners, emotions, and thoughts. Finally, you must nourish your body with good, clean, whole food and subject your body to nutrient-dense foods, exercise, positive thoughts, actions, and activities.

    Today in Part 3, we will look at nourishing your body with everything it needs to run perfectly.

    Your Food

    In order to nourish your body in every way, you need to avoid toxic foods and indulge in nutrient-dense cleansing foods. Foods that don’t build your cells are dry or dead. They are animal-based or processed foods. These foods are high in sugar and laden with chemicals used to flavor, color, sweeten, or enhance. These are the foods in boxes and bags that are advertised most on television. Marketers love to target children for these foods too.

    Nourishing foods build your body up and make you feel good. Nourishing foods are alive or as close to alive as possible. Nourishing foods are hydrating and pure, they are free of chemicals and are in a natural state or close to it. Nourishing oils are cold-pressed, non-chemically expelled oils such as olive, coconut, nut oils.

    In order to nourish your body and systems, you need to decide that you will seek pure, whole foods whenever you can. You will not find these foods at fast food joints or at most restaurants. If you do eat at restaurants talk to the staff and find out what kinds of ingredients are used and how they are prepared.

    Keep vegan snacks in your refrigerator such as homemade hummus, salsa, guacamole, fruit and vegetables salads. You will be tempted to eat whatever is most available, so keep healthy whole, pure foods available at all times and already prepared.

    When you fix a plate of food, make sure that you build it by selecting the vegetables (all colors), beans and legumes, and fruits first. Add some whole grains if you want. Then add a small amount of animal product if you choose. Eating this way will guarantee that you will stay healthier and avoid chronic disease. If you are already sick or healing, consider eliminating all animal and processed foods completely.

    Your Skin

    Anything that touches your skin can be absorbed directly into your blood. This is why prescription drugs are administered often using patches. Make sure that anything that touches your skin is made from clean, pure, non-toxic, natural ingredients. This includes household cleaners, fragrances, makeup, soap, and hair products.

    Your Mind

    In order to nourish your mind and emotions, there are hundreds of things you can do. I’ll make some suggestions and you pick a few you want to try first.

    Slow down, meditate or do some yoga. Detach from the everyday pressure you normally put on yourself and think about your priorities. Engage in the positivity that comes into your thoughts and ignore the negativity. Do what you need to do to improve your self-esteem. Get help for your addictions. Learn some humility. Stop getting involved in everyone else’s drama and let the world happen on its own. Stop judging other people and look at yourself. Love yourself and give your time and resources freely.

    Enjoy your pets. Walk your dog. Take a nap. Call your mother and ask her how she is doing. Have lunch with a friend. Hold hands with your partner and take a walk together. Think about fun times you had when you were a child. Stop thinking and talking about politics and religion. Participate in your own community. Do some volunteer work. Make a list of nice things you can do for other people that you would enjoy. Whenever you have negative thoughts, do one of your items.

    Work to fix old relationships that are strained. Make amends with people you have hurt. Is it really a big deal to admit you might have done something wrong or hurtful? Identify your own character defects and give them up too. Be who you want to be. It all starts in you. Let go of all of your expectations and your attachments to material things and outcomes.

    Eating, touching, and thinking clean, natural, and pure things will make you healthier in every way. You can make a big difference by doing one thing at a time, one day at a time, and building your life from the inside out!

    (Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)

  • Happily ever after?

    “I, Tina, take you, Tony, to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.” 

    Couples around the world, thousands of them, on the threshold of entering into life partnerships with each other, commonly recite these traditional vows. And while there is nothing “wrong” with these particular words, or their meaning, I wonder how much thought or consideration is given to whether or not these declarations actually reflect the highest level of their commitment, the deepest expression of their love, and the clearest intent and very purpose for entering into the relationship to begin with.

    I don’t think I would be too far off the mark by making this perhaps bold statement: These same couples, thousands of them, have no idea why they are entering into their relationships to begin with, nor do they have any understanding of where they are going. The fallout is demonstrable and inarguable as we continue to witness growing numbers of painful divorces and separations – or, for that matter, perhaps even a larger number of people staying in relationships that either no longer serve them well or have become downright harmful. That is not to say that longevity is the sole indicator of the value or worthiness of a relationship.  We could probably all share an experience where in a fleeting relation with another we were provided us some of our most profound remembrances and realizations, demonstrating the idea that ALL relationships create a context within which we are given an opportunity to choose and decide Who We Really Are.

    However, as our world gently transitions out of its Old Cultural Story and into its New Cultural Story, we are given another opportunity, perhaps an even grander opportunity, the opportunity to redefine and recreate our relationships with each other not only on a global scale — politically, socially, and economically — but individually, within our most intimate relations and interactions. This shift holds within it the gift of change and the awareness to create. And the most beneficial place to begin is, quite frankly, at the beginning.

    This change is not always obvious or easy. We are constantly barraged with mind-numbing television programs which degrade the holiest of unions by exploiting brides who behave poorly or by aggrandizing extraordinarily decadent and over-the-top weddings or whom offer us the advice of “relationship experts” who tell us the way our relationships “should” be. As a result, for so many, more energy and thought is expended on the pomp and circumstance of the wedding event than is given to the actual commitment.

    People spend more money on multi-tiered designer wedding cakes than they are able to practically afford in order to please their guests, a large majority of whom they don’t even know. Women starve their bodies for weeks in an effort to fit into a wedding dress one size smaller than they naturally and comfortably fit into. We smash cake in each other’s faces, we pollute ourselves with so much alcohol that we can barely even remember what took place, and we, as I earlier mentioned, allow the very first words that we utter as an expression of Who We Are to be something we cut-and-pasted from Google.

    If we are going to change everything, and reconnect to the intended purpose for our relationships, where do we begin? What kind of an experience would a “ceremony of commitment” or a “declaration of unity” under The New Spirituality present itself as? What would a couple in love, being love, expressing love offer at the dawn of their relationship as a declaration and demonstration of a spiritual partnership that would exemplify the very reason they have chosen to unite in the first place?

    Conversations with God, Book 1, Chapter 8, offers to us the following:

    “If you both agree at a conscious level that the purpose of your relationship is to create an opportunity, not an obligation—an opportunity for growth, for full Self expression, for lifting your lives to their highest potential, for healing every false thought or small idea you ever had about you, and for ultimate reunion with God through the communion of your two souls—if you take that vow instead of the vows you’ve been taking—the relationship has begun on a very good note. It’s gotten off on the right foot. That’s a very good beginning.”

    What would you, from within the framework of your own understanding and your own experience, offer to someone who has come to you seeking a new definition and a new experience of “happily ever after”?

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

  • A Blue Flower: Let Yourself Bloom

    Once in a while, I come across a film that becomes more than simply an enjoyable experience, more than just an evening of pleasant entertainment, more than merely a way to spend a couple hours of my day.  Every so often I encounter a movie that is transformational.  And that is exactly the word I would use to describe “A Blue Flower,” a personal documentary written, directed, and produced by Nils Taranger as his graduate thesis film for the University of Central Florida’s Master of Fine Arts program in Digital Entrepreneurial Cinema.

    Born with an indented chest, and subsequently experiencing rejection by his mother when he came out as being gay, Nils sets out on a spiritual quest to heal both his physical body and his emotional pain by searching for the one thing that he believed had the power and ability to cure him:  the Blue Flower, which was thought to have mystical healing powers.

    This creative, candid, and honest documentary courageously invites you on Nils’ journey as he travels far and wide, reaching out to members of the healing community — a lightworker, an alchemist, a Shaman, a Tantric yoga instructor, a spirit release treatment specialist, a “Course in Miracles” teacher, just to name a few — all in an effort to mend what he thought and believed to be broken or missing.

    In his search for the blue flower, whose existence was said to be a myth, what Nils was allowed to discover is that what he was looking for, what he thought he was lacking, what he imagined to be impossible to find, did not exist somewhere outside of him; the healing was realized through a process of self-discovery, self-love, and a remembrance of his own magnificence and his own capacity to love…himself.

    The underlying message in this film ties in perfectly to this excerpt from Conversations with God, Book 1:  “You must first see your Self as worthy before you can see another as worthy. You must first see your Self as blessed before you can see another as blessed. You must first know your Self to be holy before you can acknowledge holiness in another.”

    For information about where you can see or obtain a copy of the movie “A Blue Flower,” visit this website:  A Blue Flower

    (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation.  She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

    (If there is a book, movie, music CD, etc. that you would like to recommend to our worldwide audience, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Review”)

  • Holistic Health Part 2 – Avoiding Toxins

    In Conversations with God, Book 1, we learn that “…all illness is self-created. Even conventional medical doctors are now seeing how people make themselves sick.” 

    Let’s look at what you need to do in order to get healthy, stay healthy, and stop making yourself sick.

    There are three basic steps you have to take for stellar holistic health. If you are vigilant and careful, you can improve your own health, reduce occurrence of illness, heal yourself, and start feeling great! First you must cleanse and detoxify your body, inside and outside. Get rid of the toxins that are hanging around in your intestines, clogging your arteries, wearing out your organs, and causing symptoms. You must also detoxify your mind, thoughts and relationships. Second, you must learn to avoid toxins in everything possible from food, beauty products, air, water, household cleaners, emotions, and thoughts. Finally, you must nourish your body with good, clean, whole food and subject your body to nutrient-dense foods, exercise, positive thoughts, actions, and activities.

    Today we will look at avoiding toxins in your food and environment.

    There is no way to completely prevent toxins from entering our system through food, air, water, environment, and thoughts. If we aren’t careful, we will ingest large numbers and amounts of toxins that will build up and make us unhealthy or diseased.

    Food

    First of all, learn what is actually in the food you are eating. Processed foods contain many chemicals and synthetic substances used to flavor, color, preserve, or even make you addicted. Sugar is hidden in products you would never suspect, such as tomatoes or beans, toothpaste, ketchup, and canned fruit. Excitotoxins are regularly added to foods to make you crave them or continue eating them after you are full. Oils are partially hydrogenated, which causes trans fats to form. Big agricultural farms douse your produce liberally with pesticides and herbicides, and worse yet use GMO seeds.

    The best way to avoid toxins in your food is to increase the amount of food preparation and cooking you do at home for yourself. When you go to a restaurant, you don’t know what kind of oil in which the food is cooked, whether the ingredients are organic, or what additives have been included. Stop buying processed foods when at all possible. Processed foods are anything that is pre-prepared, or in a box or bag at the grocery store. I consider deli and restaurant food “processed” as well because they are constructed from processed ingredients instead of homemade ones. It’s pretty safe to assume that anything that has a commercial on TV is a processed food.

    Stop drinking bottled beverages, sodas and diet sodas, or restaurant offerings of tea or coffee, and just drink water. Carry a water bottle with you at all times and drink water all day long. You will flush out your system and prevent new toxins from entering your system. As a bonus, you will save a lot of money.

    When eating animal products, know where it came from and how they were farmed. Big farms use antibiotics and a host of chemicals to promote growth and appetite, and the animals are processed in horrible conditions. Check that fish hasn’t come from an area that is known to be contaminated. Environmental groups recommend that you avoid Atlantic halibut, king mackerel, sea bass, shark, swordfish, tuna, and farmed salmon among others.

    Environment

    Your skin is the largest organ in your body and anything that touches your skin is absorbed into your system. In order to avoid toxins in the future, be aware of what household products you use to clean, such as bathroom, oven, drain, and detergent cleaners. Even many “green” products contain toxic substances. Some of the most damaging chemicals are in fragrances which don’t legally have to be identified as anything except “Fragrance.” Many detergents still have phosphates, surfectants, and petroleum-based ingredients which have been shown to cause cancer.

    Consider making your own cleaning products from simple ingredients such as baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, and borax. And again, you will save money!

    Surprisingly, you are also exposed to toxins in many health and beauty products like soap, hair products, skin products, makeup, and perfume. Look for ingredients such as synthetic color, DBP, Triclosan, DEA, TEA, metals such as titanium or aluminum, Petrolatum, fragrance, parabens, benzophenone, ceteareth, and more.  Don’t buy products with poisons in them. Great guides to find out whether your health and beauty products are toxic can be found on Environmental Working Groups website www.ewg.org.

    Before you use a product, ask yourself this question: Would you give this to a baby? If not, then don’t use it on yourself either!

    Emotional

    Your thoughts, behaviors, and relationships can add to your stress and disease! If you have regular negative thoughts or an involved in toxic relationships, if you repeat destructive behaviors or participate in “office gossip” or triangulation, you are adding negativity to your health bank.

    Reduce your own stress and toxicity by replacing your negative thoughts with positive ones. If a negative thought pops into your head, ignore it and move on to the next thought. Or better yet, intentionally replace it with a positive version. Don’t allow yourself to talk about other people or hurt other people even indirectly.

    If you identify that you are a negative person or you keep ending up in negative situations or relationship, ask for help from positive family, friends, or seek the help of a counselor. You will be much happier and your health will be better.

    What’s Next?

    We have examined how to detoxify yourself and how to avoid toxins. Next time, we will look at nourishing yourself with nutrient dense foods, positive thoughts and behaviors.

    (Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth is helping people improve their lives through nutrition and lifestyle education, health coaching, and by helping others to learn to make informed choices. Beth continues to spread understanding of the connection between body, mind, and spirit and encourages all to discern the truth about food, consumer products, environment, and life choices. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)

  • Making the most of a “chance encounter”

    Dear readers: Today’s advice question comes from one of my students in the CWG Online School, who has recently decided and declared his life calling is to be a “good Samaritan.” When I read his response to one of our homework questions, I knew I wanted to share it with all of you in the hopes that you will gain from his experience:

    As I was leaving a take-away shop with my dinner recently, I passed a guy who was just sitting on the sidewalk with no shirt on, an unkempt look, a bottle of beer, and a shopping bag which seemed to have all his possessions in it. As I walked past he says “Hey old mate.” I chose to ignore him, thinking, “I do not need this hassle or want to deal with this at the moment. I just want to get home, I’m exhausted.” And I then let fear take over. He says again, “Hey old mate,” but louder this time. I chose to ignore him again and kept walking. Again he says “Hey old mate,” and his voice is quite loud. This then got the better of me and I snapped at him and said quite loud myself, “Are you right? What’s Up?” He then looked at me and slowly turned his head away and looked towards the ground – and I just got in the car and drove away, feeling angry and also like a heel. Then I beat myself up a bit and thought of a thousand different ways I could have handled this differently. I could have acknowledged him at least. Maybe he was down on his luck and just hungry and I could have bought him a $9 meal from the take away shop, as I had the money. And not let fear take over. Maybe he might have only wanted to know what time it was, etc. So this was a real eye opener for me to see that I have a long way to go in having the right attitude and how I perceive others and how I might respond in unusual situations. I am feeling a little lost at the moment… Ben

    Oh, Ben, don’t you see the perfect irony in this “chance encounter”? If not, please let me show you how it looks from my perspective:

    1. You decide and declare Who You Really Are, which is a good Samaritan.

    2. You meet someone on the street who, in the past, would have frightened you, simply by his appearance—unkempt, drinking beer, apparently homeless.

    3. You forget your decision to be a good Samaritan and you do the exact opposite, reacting as you would have in the past, rather than creating as you would like to from now on, when faced with this type of situation.

    4. He looks you in the eye, then slowly looks away as if to say, “You forgot, Ben, to be a good Samaritan. Here I am giving you the perfect opportunity to fulfill exactly what it is you say you are, and you forgot.”

    5. You, of course, feel terrible because your actions were out of alignment with your new decision about yourself.

    Please, please forgive yourself for forgetting, dear sweet Ben. We all forget… until we don’t anymore. And remember this encounter, always. Then the next time something like this happens, you will choose differently, thus allowing yourself to feel really good about remembering, then acting on, your decision to be a good Samaritan.

    Do you know what the definition of “sin” is? It’s missing the mark. Whose mark? Our own! When we commit a sin, we’ve fallen short of who we say we are, knowing we could have done better. Now, “go and sin no more,” dear Bob. You are growing into higher and higher states of awareness, and these growing pains are all part of the process. This is Life, giving you the right and perfect opportunities for you to step into your next grandest version of the greatest vision you ever held about Who You Are.

    This was a perfect life lesson for you. And now, the “Moral of the Story”:

    When you lose, don’t lose the lesson!

    (Annie Sims is the Global Director of CWG Advanced Programs, is a Conversations With God Life Coach and author/instructor of the CWG Online School. To connect with Annie, please email her at Annie@TheGlobalConversation.com

    (If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to:  Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com where our team is waiting to hear from you.)

  • If everything is perfect, why bother?

    “If everything is perfect, happening in Divine order, why bother doing anything?”

    This question was recently posed to the audience of The Global Conversation’s Facebook page in an effort to find out what people think about what may be one of the most asked about — and perhaps most misunderstood — concepts in the new-thought community.

    If there is a larger spiritual design to all of this — that is, all of life — if our ultimate outcome is already guaranteed, why in the world do we need to worry about changing or creating anything during our time on earth?  Can’t we just sit back and enjoy the ride?   Let the chips fall where they may?

    Our Facebook question triggered some wonderful and diverse responses from people around the globe.

    Yoga Wahyudi says:  “because there’s no such thing as perfect.”

    Could that be true, that we actually are less than perfect?  That nothing is perfect?  Is much of the world striving and struggling and reaching for what they may never be able to attain?  Is it true that there is no higher purpose or all-encompassing perfection involved here?

    There are religions in our world today that support the idea that we are flawed from the moment we enter into the realm of physicality.  If we embrace that belief system, one that requires us to believe ourselves as separate from God, upon what then do we base our decision of whether or not to become active participants in the happenings in our world?   Is it merely an exercise of atonement for our perceived defects, earning or receiving credit for our “good” deeds?

    Tony Meade shared a quote from Albert Einstein:  “Nothing happens until something moves.”

    And Deanne Steinbeck offered this thought:  “Even divine order requires action, every action you make has a butterfly effect and it may be one of your actions that inspires someone else and so on. We are here to learn, grow and love and for us to action our best self…..divine order requires each of us to action love into the world.”

    So perhaps it is within our actions, our doingness, our creativity that we are experiencing the perfection of our choices?  Would we ever be able to know who we are, to declare who we are, or express who we are if we never engaged in demonstrations of who we are?

    The answers to these questions will depend largely upon what your belief and understanding is about why you are here, on this planet, to begin with.  Conversations with God shared this powerful message with us:

    “My divine purpose in dividing Me was to create sufficient parts of Me so that I could know Myself experientially. There is only one way for the Creator to know Itself experientially as the Creator, and that is to create. And so I gave to each of the countless parts of Me (to all of My spirit children) the same power to create which I have as the whole….My purpose in creating you, My spiritual offspring, was for Me to know Myself as God. I have no way to do that save through you. Thus it can be said (and has been, many times) that My purpose for you is that you should know yourself as Me.”

    And it is within this message that I believe we are offered an understanding that most clearly explains the dichotomy that exists between “everything being perfect” and the call for creation.  It comes to us not in the form of a commandment, but rather in the form of a gift from God, so that we may experience ourselves as the Divine and so that the Divine may know Herself experientially.

    So when we are at the choice point, and we find ourselves being given an opportunity to decide, the important questions to ask ourselves are:  Who am I? Where am I? Why am I where I am? And what do I intend to do about that?  When we purposefully transform our thoughts into actions, we become powerful creators and active participants in the evolution of life…not only for ourselves, but for everyone.

    – Rosa Parks experienced this when she chose to stand up to legally imposed racial segregation and faced her own arrest.

    – Hotel workers at theTaj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, India, experienced this when they placed their own lives at risk in efforts to protect guests during the deadly terrorist attacks in 2008.

    – Nancy Lublin experiences this in her capacity as CEO at DoSomething.org, one of the country’s largest nonprofit organizations championing for young people and creating social change in the areas of bulling & violence, environment, homelessness, and human rights, just to name a few.

    – Cassandra Curley experienced this when she walked 50 miles in each of the 50 states in 50 weeks in conjunction with her 50th birthday, spreading the message to anyone who would listen that peace is our natural state and that conflict is generated by fear.

    So I pose the question again:  If everything is perfect, happening in Divine order, why bother doing anything? 

     (Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation.  She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)