Author: resolutewoman
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Aunt Ola’s doing okay at 105
When we heard that my husband’s Aunt Ola had been ill with pneumonia, we were concerned. When we visited her in August, Ola was still happy in her independent-living apartment, still up for two hours of conversation, still ready to walk us all the way to the door of her senior-citizen complex. However, since Ola…
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Following your own advice
Often, I realize, I know exactly what would be the best choice to make about what to eat or what to do with my time, but I don’t make the best choice. Sometimes, I even give my children advice and then think later that it might be good for me to follow the advice I’m…
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Need some Vitamin C?
Even if you already have had a glass of orange juice today, you may need some Vitamin C. We heard an interview with Dr. Edward Hallowell on National Public Radio recently, and he suggested that one way we can create a little calmness in our busy lives is to get a little more Vitamin C.…
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Wisdom from Piper Kerman
After she graduated from Smith College, Piper Kerman wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. Drifting for a while, she became friends with a group of people who were buying and selling drugs in the United States and other countries, too. Eventually, though, she moved on. It was years later, after she…
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Ever looked at a magazine at the airport?
Have you ever stopped to look at the women on the covers of the magazines at the newsstand at the airport terminal? We’re talking about all those photos of celebrities and models who are very beautiful and very slim and very young. They’re “flawless,” says the website MissRepresentation.org, which promotes the documentary “Miss Representation.” The…
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The myth of perfection
Debora Spar, president of Barnard College, urges women to recognize that the quest for perfection is a myth. In an article in the October 1 & 8 issue of Newsweek, Spar writes that one of the reasons women are unhappy is “fear that their kids don’t practice piano at least two hours a day, their…
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Wisdom from Emily Dickinson
“I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time,” Emily Dickinson wrote. In another poem, she said, “The moon was but a chin of gold a night or two ago.” And, one autumn day, Emily observed, “The morns are meeker than they were, the nuts are getting brown; the berry’s cheek is…
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More wisdom from Cheryl Strayed
What makes Cheryl Strayed, who wrote Wild about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, special? Her “ability to go to dark places that we don’t like to talk about,” writes Edward Nawotka in an article in the October 22, 2012, issue of the Dallas Morning News. “Urging people to do the same is something she returns…
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How do habits change?
As we all know too well, there are no easy, simple answers to rely on when we want to change a habit. As Charles Duhigg says in his book The Power of Habit—Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, “There is, unfortunately, no specific set of steps guaranteed to work for every…
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Plenty of cues
Do you remember that we wrote a blog post recently about habits and talked about the cue, the routine and the reward? A habit is what happens every morning when you grab a cup of coffee at your office. The coffee is your cue to pick up a donut, too. The donut becomes a routine…