A beautiful life???

During the past few weeks, I've found myself participating in Melissa's Beautiful Life series over at The Inspired Room - not overly enthusiastically at first, but slowly warming to the idea. I mean, who am I to speak of a beautiful life or how to find the key to that most mercurial of locks?

Then I realized she didn't ask us to come up with the key but only to search for it - to open our eyes to the beauty in our lives. This week has been a particularly difficult challenge for me.

Not one but two tragedies - one on the heels of the other - galloped into my life this week. Unexpectedly, without one ounce of warning, they came bounding through the door like puppies let off their leashes for the first time. A dear friend diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and a nephew diagnosed with a brain tumor will make you sit up straight.

While beauty has been elusive, perspective has been born at tremendous cost this week, as perspective always is. Why is it that the opportunity to see life in proper proportion almost always comes at a significant price? We need a jolt sometimes in order to understand the value of what we have.

Tragedy may not bring beauty, but it brings clarity, and it fosters a humble gratitude that only a glimpse at what we could lose will ever do.

On this day my husband is healthy, my son and his wife and children are healthy, and I am loved by them. Can there be a beauty more undiluted, more valuable, more enviable than that?

Turn Stress into Strength

Debbie Mandel, author of Addicted to Stress, says many women don't realize they are addicted to stress because they are not paying attention to their own needs. "Instead of helicoptering over everyone else and their happiness, it's time to helicopter over yourself and identify that pattern of [being an] overdoer at home and at work," she says. Debbie shares ways to combat stress and turn it into useful energy.
Photo:© 2008 Jupiterimages Corporation

Reclaim Your Identity
Find the hidden girl within! Who were you before you became a wife, mother or colleague? What makes your heart sing? What do you enjoy doing? "You need to go back to the basics of your identity," Debbie says. Think about what you like to do and ask others what you are good at doing and write these things down. Debbie says you should ask yourself, "What is it I want to accomplish for myself instead of other people?"

Learn to Become a Healthy Narcissist
You don't need to be self-obsessed to be a healthy narcissist, Debbie says. Instead, engage in good self-care, she says. "Dress to please yourself and for success," Debbie says. "Your accessories, anything about you, even the jewelry you wear—whether it is costume or it is real or it is fun—it expresses who you are, your identity to others."

Build a Healthy Body
Lift weights to lift your spirit or take an aerobics class to sweat away the stress of the day, Debbie says. "Because I am exercising and feeling fit and energetic and ridding myself of stress, I will [also] eat healthy, because my body is my temple," she says.

Cultivate Your Sense of Fun and Humor
Reduce problems and stress to absurdity by looking at life with a sense of humor, Debbie says. Then, learn some jokes, read funny books and watch funny TV shows. "If you keep looking at 'funny,' it will become a part of you," Debbie says. "Pretend you are a detective and you've got this eye for humor. I think if you find someone who makes you laugh or smile, conjure that up [during a stressful moment], and it just breaks the perspective immediately."

Jump-Start Your Libido
Women get depleted from their constant to-do list, and sex is often the last thing on their minds, Debbie says. "A woman has to relax, she has to be in a good zone, and if she is stressed, [sex] is just not going to happen," she says. "There has to be a point where you say, '[Intimacy] is special for me, and I am scheduling it and I am making time,' and then everything will be better for you because you will be happier. This is a way to harness your power."

Reframe Your Thoughts
When people get upset, they create a negative stories. Why not make your stories positive instead? "Come up with a way to create a positive story where you are the heroine, and this way you build up immunity to all this negativity," Debbie says.
Source: oprah.com

The Health Benefits of Black, Green, White, and Oolong Tea

The following post is my contribution to The Inspired Room's Beautiful Life series. I believe that a healthy body contributes to a happy life. Thanks, Melissa.
Savory
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As I placed a new calendar on the bulletin board at the beginning of this month, I decided to take at least one healthy step into the new year. I wanted to build a new habit that would be beneficial to my health.

My time is not my own, and there can be demands that are immediate at any given time of the day. My new habit had to be something easy, something I actually thought I could still be doing on December 31, 2009.

I wanted my goal to be small, specific, and so simple that failure would be an impossibility. Most importantly, I wanted it to be something that would have the potential to offer health benefits if I stuck with it.

I decided that drinking green tea would be my new habit. What could be easier? I would - at the very least - take a few minutes every afternoon to sip a cup of green tea with lemon. Who knew it would turn into a few minutes of solitude, a time when I stop and take a deep breath to unwind? It helps me get in touch with what's going on inside. I can feel my body and mind as it relaxes and gives in to the slowness of the moment.

The best part is the added health benefit of drinking green tea. Studies are indicating some interesting results as you'll read in the following article. I always add a slice of lemon to the cup because I've read that it significantly contributes to the increase of the antioxidant effect. Drinking tea - an easy way to add a healthy habit to your day.

I hope you find the following article interesting and helpful.
Savory
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Topping the list of surprising superfoods is tea—any type that comes from the leaves of the plant Camellia sinensis, including black, green, white, and oolong.
Many studies have looked at the health benefits of tea. While the jury is still out on some of these potential benefits, there appears to be compelling evidence for tea's ability to reduce the risk of heart disease.

"There are some intriguing studies that tea may prevent cancer, reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, and impact halitosis [bad breath], and while these studies are more speculative, the strongest evidence is on the reduction of coronary heart disease risk," says Tufts University researcher Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD.

Tea's secret ingredient is catechins, a type of flavonoid from the family of disease-fighting antioxidant phytochemicals that is also found in fruits, vegetables, and red wine.

Not just any cup of tea will provide you with a healthy dose of flavonoids. Strong, steeped tea is richest in these phytochemicals. And the longer you steep your tea, the more of these healthy extracts your beverage will contain.

Because iced tea is typically diluted, it's not as good a source as hot tea. Bottled teas start off with low levels of flavonoids, and tend to lose potency over time. Decaffeinated tea is a good option, though it has about 10 percent fewer phytochemicals than tea with caffeine.

So how much tea should you drink? Some studies have suggested that drinking three cups each day can reduce your risk of heart disease.

Blumberg suggests choosing tea whenever you can. He points out that it can contribute as much antioxidants as a serving of fruit or vegetable without the calories, and is far preferable to soft drinks.

If you add sugar or full-fat milk to your tea, do so sparingly. These additions can turn naturally noncaloric tea into a high-calorie beverage.

For more surprisingly healthy foods continue...

Morning Ritual

The following is a contribution to The Inspired Room's Beautiful Life series.

One of my solitary pleasures occurs in the morning - most often in the very early hours of the morning. Before my day begins in earnest, I sit at the computer, check out a few blogs, research something that I may be thinking of writing about, or check my email. It's always dark when I begin. If I'm left undisturbed, I can be found still sitting there an hour later as daylight comes creeping around the edges of the blinds, but before I even glance at the computer, I do something else first.

It's a quiet time for me. Everyone else is sleeping because of my early morning habit. I pad my way through the living room to the kitchen, start the coffee, and return to the computer. As the minutes tick by, the aroma slowly makes its way down the hall and finds me. Is there a richer or more comforting aroma anywhere than coffee as it brews? I think that's why I originally started drinking it - just to hold that warm cup in my hands, close my eyes, and breathe deeply. Notice I didn't mention the added benefit of the caffeine injection - a definite plus.

I found my favorite coffee mug at a wonderful thrift shop that's only a few miles from my house. I can not tell you how many hours of entertainment I've derived from walking the isles of this quirky, little shop. I love the idea of recycling the castoffs of someone I've never met. Not sure what that's all about, but finding a treasure among the rubble is fun.

That's where I found my favorite mug. It was sitting there among the all too predictable debris. Scrawled on the bottom was .55 cents, a price with which even the most exacting miser could not argue. I claimed it and took it home.

It isn't fancy, but it meets all of my peculiar requirements for the perfect mug. It's large enough for a bowl of steaming beef stew, and holds plenty of coffee when it's only two thirds full so it doesn't threaten to spill as I walk through the house. The handle is generous enough to allow for a comfortable grip. And it's beautiful. It's creamy, biscuit color is adorned only by an intricate frieze of leaves and berries which encircles the top. I enjoy drinking from it.

It's such a pleasurable ritual, drinking coffee, shared by most of us every morning. I kind of like the idea of that. No matter how threatening the world becomes, no matter what the news may tell us happened while we slept, the continuity of our coffee ritual is reassuring.

So whether it's a Snoopy mug, a Starbucks cup, a thrift shop find, or fine china, that first cup of coffee - before the outside world comes rushing in - is a moment to savor!

The Subtleties of Januray

What are the components of a beautiful life? How do we bring happiness, contentment or pleasure into a life? Melissa @ The Inspired Room has posed this question and has invited her readers to participate in the answers. Read more Beautiful Life stories.


After the activity and almost frenetic socializing of November and December, I find January to be a balm for the spirit. The frigid air and the shortened days offer the perfect excuse to disengage, to look inward, to take stock of where I've been and where I would like to go.

I love the solitary moments that this month, more than any other, offers. All through December, I look forward to those quiet January moments - a book, a cup of hot tea, a favorite chair. The darker and colder the world becomes outside my window, the cozier and warmer it feels inside.

It's a time for reflection. I experience less stress and feel more optimistic than any other time. I know this is not the case for many others. It was not always so for me, but now that I've accrued a few years, I find the charms of January appeal to my more introspective side.

Maybe it's the kind of month that takes a few years of living to appreciate, or perhaps I need it more than when I was younger. It has a recuperative quality to it now. I feel no obligation to extend myself, to stretch, to push, push, push in January. I allow myself to just be. I cook big pots of things, watch good movies that I've seen before, and write.

When I was younger, I could only manage to get through the dreariness of January by looking past its icy complexion to spring. I couldn't see the subtle beauty of brave, bare branches stretching toward a stark winter sky, snow birds eating at the feeders outside my window, or the white ice around the edges of the creek.

Beauty is to be found where you look for it. Oh, if I'd only looked a little sooner.

Photo: Lantif

Reverse The Aging Process

I found this interesting article about the power of our minds at Improved Lives, another inspirational site for you to explore.

Photo Credit
Most psychology studies aren’t that much use to us in our daily lives because most psychologists aren’t that interested in giving us practical advice on how to improve ourselves. In these two studies, however, the researchers stumbled across a way to drastically improve our daily lives. They figured out how to make people get physically younger and become healthier by using nothing but their minds.

Imaginative Seniors

The year was 1979, but for a group of elderly men, the year was actually 1959. At least, Ellen Langer, the psychologist leading the study, had convinced them to pretend that the year was 1959:

The magazines, newspapers, and music the men saw and heard were all 20 years old and the men themselves were told to behave and talk as if it were 1959.

It doesn’t sound particularly impressive does it? Get a bunch of old men to play make-believe, what could that possibly do? Apparently it can do a lot, because at the end of the experiment the men:

• Looked visibly younger
• Had straighter posture
• Had more flexible joints

Now the problem with all of those is that they’re kind of hard to measure. There was, however, one area of improvement where the evidence was incontrovertible: finger length.

As we get older, our bodies succumb to gravity and generally shrink, and our fingers, which are no exception to this rule, get shorter. But the fingers of the men in this study were actually longer at the end of the experiment. The aging process had literally been reversed.

Healthy Hotel Maids

Just a year ago, in 2007, Ellen Langer started a new experiment, this time with colleague Alia Crum. The researchers took various health measurements from a group of 84 hotel workers, and then split the group in two. They told one group that the physical exercise they were getting by cleaning hotel rooms satisfied the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle and the maids were given specific examples of how their work was actually exercise.

Langer and Crum told the other group, the control group, nothing.

And the results:

Four weeks later, Langer and Crum returned to find some measurements of both groups: the control group hadn’t changed physically, but the test group had decreased all of the following: weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index.

It’s important to realize that the maids hadn’t actually done anything different, they changed all those physical aspects of themselves with their minds. It almost sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. Your mind is an extremely powerful tool for change.

So what can we learn from this?

What was going on in the brains of the senior citizens and the hotel workers is a process called the psychosomatic effect. Most of you are probably familiar with the psychosomatic effect but don’t know it, because it’s what causes stress to be so unhealthy for us.

But rather than letting it make us unhealthy, we should be using the psychosomatic effect to our advantage:

• Think Young - It might be a stretch to surround ourselves with 20 year old magazines and T.V. shows like the seniors in the first study did, but there are other things you can do to stay young. First, don’t act your age! Most people would agree that people younger than themselves are more active and are out having more fun, so go be more active and have more fun. Second, recognize and enjoy the things in your life that are ‘young’, like that sport you love to play or that late night out with friends.
• Think Healthy - It would be difficult to sit on the couch and think your waist line smaller, but what you can do is recognize that the exercise you do get is effective and good for you.
• Think Happy - This may sound a little counter-intuitive, but just like stress has a lot of negative effects on the body, happiness has a lot of positive effects on the body. One thing you can do is just be mindful of your own mood. If you’re not happy, look for some aspect of the situation you find yourself in that is positive, and be grateful for it. Something else you can do is smile more. Our brains don’t know the difference between a real smile and a fake smile, so even a fake smile, although it might not look great, causes your brain to release a lot of the same ‘happy chemicals’ that it would release if your smile had been real.

These are all great ways to use the psychosomatic effect to your benefit, but remember that it’s equally easy for it to have a negative effect on your body. That means that you should also focus on banishing negative thoughts from your mind, lest they counteract all your positive thinking.

Further Reading:
- How You Tell The Story Of Your Life by Senia Maymin

The Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits - A Guided Tour

I'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite places to visit, Zen Habits. Leo Babuta is the author of The Power Of Less. He believes that doing less doesn't necessarily equate with being less productive, and that owning less does not mean that we have less. The offerings you will find at Zen Habits respect the philosophy that abundance can be achieved through savoring simplicity.
Savory
-----------------------Photo courtesy of mudeth

The Beginner's Guide to Zen Habits

While some of you have been following Zen Habits since its early days (beginning of 2007), many of you are fairly new readers. To help you through the fairly overwhelming archives, I’ve compiled a beginner’s guide. Kind of a Quick Start guide.

First, a note: Please don’t try to go through this all at once. There are days and days worth of reading here. I’ve just organized that so that you can go to the stuff you want to learn about first. Take it in small chunks. :)

Where do you start when you have a thousand posts to read through? You start with the best, or at least the most popular. So here they are: The All-Time Most Popular Posts on Zen Habits:

1. 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It
2. 20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life
3. Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life
4. The Cheapskate Guide: 50 Tips for Frugal Living
5. A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home
6. 10 Tasty, Easy and Healthy Breakfast Ideas
7. 50 Ways to Be Romantic on the Cheap
8. 30 Things to Do to Keep From Getting Bored Out of Your Skull at Work
9. Get Off Your Butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You’re in a Slump
10. Top 42 Exercise Hacks
11. Handbook for Life: 52 Tips for Happiness and Productivity
12. Simple Living Simplified: 10 Things You Can Do Today to Simplify Your Life
13. Top 20 Motivation Hacks - An Overview

But those are just the stars of the All-Star team. Next you’ll want to delve into some of your favorite topics. You can go through the main categories:

Read More...

Meditation In Ten Easy Steps

I found the following post by Mare at Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online

photo credit: gill.shail

Although meditation often has a spiritual connotation, the benefits of meditation include not only strengthening our connection to something larger than ourselves, but also improved health, heightened creativity, better problem-solving skills, and increased feelings of well-being and serenity. During meditation breathing slows down, blood pressure decreases, and stress hormone levels fall. Even though the body relaxes completely during meditation, the mind is awake, although quiet. This relaxed mental state is ideal for coming up with new and unexpected ways of doing things, for releasing worry, fear, anxiety and other negative emotions, and for recharging our mental batteries.

Below you will find a simple ten step meditation routine you can begin to practice right away to help you relax, quiet your mind chatter, and create access to the deeper knowledge that resides within.

1. Ideally, you should meditate for at least fifteen minutes a day, every day. Also, you should try to meditate at the same time each day to help create a sense of ritual. You can use an egg timer to countdown to fifteen minutes so that you’re not constantly opening your eyes to see how much time has gone by.

2. Find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted. If you would like ideas on how to create a space for meditation, refer to my previous post, “Creating Sacred Space”. You can lie down on a yoga mat or a sofa, you can sit on a meditation cushion, or you can sit on the floor or a comfortable chair with your back straight and without crossing your arms or your legs.

3. The more senses you can engage in signaling to your brain that it’s time to slow down, the better. Play soft music or Tibetan chants, or get a sound machine that plays nature sounds. In addition, the sound of rhythmic drums has long been known to help create a state of deep trance. Light an aromatherapy candle or incense. You can also place a few drops of essential oil combined with water in a ceramic diffuser, or dip a cotton ball in the scented oil and place it nearby. Smells that are relaxing include cedar wood, chamomile, lavender, and sandalwood. For the sense of touch you can wrap a soft, cotton shawl or blanket around yourself.

4. To help you begin to relax, rub a tablespoon of oil between your palms and massage your forehead using gentle, circular motions; then massage your temples, the outside of your ears, the top of your head, and the back and front of your neck. You can also massage your scalp. With a second tablespoon of oil massage the soles of your feet. Deepak Chopra explains in “Grow Younger, Live Longer – 10 Steps to Reverse Aging”, that a massage gives you access to your inner pharmacy, and a slow, soothing massage releases natural relaxing chemicals.

5. In “Energetic Boundaries – Practical Protection and Renewal Skills for Healers, Therapists, and Sensitive People”, Karla McLaren suggests that you create a “room in your head” that gives you a place to settle into your body. Simply imagine a room inside your head where your eyes are the windows, the sides of your head are the walls, the top of your head is the roof, and the floor is at about the level of your upper jaw. You can mentally decorate the room any way you like, but make sure you add a comfortable chair or sofa to sit in. When you’re ready to start your meditation session, feel yourself comfortably sitting in the chair or sofa right behind your eyes. Imagining yourself in this sanctuary will help you focus your energy and attention inwardly so that you can begin to let go of the worries and demands of the outside world.

6. Once you’re comfortably seated in your inner sanctuary, close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Awareness of the breathing process is itself sufficient to slow down your breathing rate. Let your abdomen move upward on inhalation and downward on exhalation. By focusing on the breath we bring the mind and body together in one place.

“There are people who are born and die and never once are aware of the breath going in and out of the body. That’s how far away they live from themselves.”

Ajahn Chah

7. To relax even more, count backwards slowly from 50 to 1, and feel yourself relaxing more and more with each number. You can also imagine a warm, gentle light entering through the top of your head and moving slowly down toward your toes, relaxing your body completely.

8. Continue to concentrate on your breathing. If your mind wanders, simply bring it gently back to the present moment and refocus on your breath. It often helps to repeat a simple phrase to help keep you focused, such as the Zen saying: “Simply being with what is.”

9. Once you feel a sense of steadiness and calm, you can begin the process of inner listening. Nothing has to happen next; experience the present moment for what it is. You can also use this time to silently repeat positive affirmations and/or to practice creative visualization.

10. When you’re ready to come out of your meditation session, tell yourself that when you open your eyes at the count of 5, you will be completely awake and alert, feeling better than before.

Continue here.

A Beautiful Life

Photo: Savory

Melissa, over at The Inspired Room, proposed an interesting exercise. In a post entitled Balancing Act: Finding a Beautiful Life, she sought to include her readers by asking them, "Have you set any goals or made any progress this week towards the life YOU want?" A provocative question indeed.

The word I focused on in her post was in the title, "Balancing." What is life if it is not a balancing act? A metaphor - three ring circus - comes to mind.

Balance is essential to a happy and peaceful existence. Within the least insightful among us - those who have never even pondered such things - a primal voice whispers that contentment resides in a life of moderation, variety, balance in all things.

My particular circumstances at this particular time of my life create significant challenges to that end, but can't that be said of almost any life at any given time?

Mind, body and spirit. How can we say that one is more important than another, but there are times when we become so focused on one thing that something else inevitably suffers. I'm not saying this is always bad. There are times in our lives when we must give our complete attention to one thing, but we need to be mindful not to allow those times to continue for too long.

Goals seem too intimidating for me right now, but how about habits. Perhaps I could put a concerted effort toward changing one or two small things. Repetition creates a habit. Perhaps I could find those precious moments to exercise, to meditate, or maybe I'll make sure I find the time to do something I love, something that fills me up.

This is the time of year to take stock, to evaluate, to ask ourselves if we are living the kind of life we imagined for ourselves in our higher moments of consciousness? Are we fulfilled in our careers? Do we feel valued? Are we good with our loved ones? Do we feel comfortable that we're making our choices according to our ethics and morals? Where do we stand financially? Are we spending our money on things that will better our lives, or simply buying stuff without reason and purpose behind our choices.

As I evaluate all these things, I feel more gratitude than stress. I realize these are the right questions, and it's up to me to make sure that I am always working toward a life that will give the right answers this time of year - every year.

Thank you , Melissa, for prompting a little navel gazing.

Laurie Colwin

Those who are so fortunate as to own Laurie Colwin books never relinquish them. Though they may be dogeared from multiple readings, when it's time to move on to a new city, a new home, a new life, her books are carefully taken down from the shelf, dusted off, and tucked away in a labeled box, only to be unpacked and positioned on another shelf, in the next place called home.

Her words, like chicken soup, offer comfort for the soul. Her respect for domesticity and her elevation of family and friendship have made her books timeless treasures.
Her unexpected and premature death has not dissuaded her readers. If anything, their numbers have grown. All of her books are still in print, though her absence has been felt for well over a decade.

Perhaps a certain passage from the title story of "The Lone Pilgrim" could apply to someone you know. It reminds me of my own sister; she cherished hand-me-downs: bowls, utensils, cast iron pans, and recipes that once belonged to our grandmother. She took great joy in trying recipes handed down through our family over the years. She once demanded that I learn to make pastry, and would not relent till we spent an entire day making pies. It was so important to her to pass on the tradition. Laurie Colwin honors tradition and domesticity with her words.
"Oh, domesticity! The wonder of dinner plates and cream pitchers. You know your friends by their ornaments. You want everything. If Mrs. A. has her mama's old jelly mold, you want one too, and everything else that goes with it -- the family, the tradition, the years of having jelly molded in it. We domestic sensualists live in a state of longing, no matter how comfortable our own places are."

You can find Laurie Colwin's books here.

Looking Back - Going Forward

As we move forward into a fresh, new year, though we may wish to leave pieces of our past behind, they trail in our wake as surely as a bride's train follows her down the isle to her new beginning. It's not only foolhardy to go forward without examining our past, it can be treacherous.

Now is the time to assess the last twelve months, to take full measure of our accomplishments, to seek the lessons from our missteps, to consider where we want to go from here, and how best to get there. Unless we take a moment to make a few observations, how can we know the direction in which we wish to proceed? Benjamin Franklin once said, "I have often looked at the sun without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting."

Take a few minutes to answer the following questions that I found over at "More In Your Life." I hope your answers will be helpful in charting your course.

Photo: BMA
1. How is where you are in life today different from where you were last January?

2. How are you different today, internally, than you were a year ago?

3. Of all you've experienced in the past year, what are you the most proud of?

4. What did you shy away from in 2008 that you wish you'd gone for?

5. What did you learn about yourself this year?

6. Who impacted your life the most this past year?

7. What are the most important lessons you learned in 2008 that you want to be conscious of in 2009?

8. What are you being called to next in your personal growth?

9. If you could create three things in your life the coming year, what would they be?

10. What parts of yourself will you need to call upon to create those three things with wild success in 2009?

Hyacinths

“If, of thy mortal goods, thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one and from the dole,
Buy Hyacinths to feed the soul”
~Muslih-uddin Sadi


When the most frigid months and the shortest days of the year are upon us, when the warmth of the sun is infirm of purpose, and a somber blanket stretches across the darkened skies, the human spirit longs for a bit of spring. Hyacinths can be easily grown inside during these colorless months. Feed your soul with the scent and beauty of spring until the real thing comes again.


Photo Source: Lantlif

Secrets of Simplicity

Learn to Live Better With Less

By Mary Carlomagno
Illustrations by Andrea Cobb

The following review was found on Chronicle Books.

"Secrets of Simplicity -- Bulging in-boxes, out-of-control stress, and even climate change serve as reminders that when it comes to being happy and healthy, less is more. In this interactive journal, organization expert Mary Carlomagno leads readers on a journey toward release and discovery.

Guided by the principle that the way you spend your time and money should reflect your true priorities, Secrets of Simplicity shows how to make practical changes to unburden your closets and calendars and make room for what's really important. Readers can record their successes, as they de-clutter their homes and in the process, their minds.

Mary Carlomagno is the founder and owner of Order, a company that specializes in clutter control. Her philosophy has been featured in Woman's Day, Redbook, and the Washington Post. She lives in New Jersey."

I found this review on Chronicle Books . Chronicle sells the book for $19.95, but I found it had been reduced to a reasonable $13.57 on Amazon. It can still be delivered in time for Christmas, but you must choose two day shipping. For delivery after December 24, this item is eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.