There’s just no denying that our energy levels begin to ebb as we age. However, there are steps you can take to boost your joie de vivre at any age, and you don’t need 5-Hour Energy or any other chemical-laden products to make it happen. You can do it safely, naturally, and best of all sustainably.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

Get More Sleep

There are three main ways to increase your energy levels naturally. The obvious one is to get more sleep. Most people who reach the age of forty are still gainfully employed at full-time jobs, many have kids in the house, and the majority just don’t get the full eight hours a night that will ensure they experience peak levels of energy. So if you’re feeling fatigued, you’re having trouble focusing, and you’re starting to experience issues with absentmindedness (car keys in the fridge? – enough said), a sleep deficit could definitely be to blame. Try making time for your beauty rest each night and you’ll soon catch up and find yourself facing each day with a lot more vim and vigor.

Change Your Diet

The second option is to change your diet, and there is a lot you can do here. The first thing you should consider is cutting out stimulants like caffeine and sugar. Say what?! Yes, you read that right. While these compounds can be used to bump up your energy level, they can only provide a short-term solution. And in the long run they will tax your brain and your body and leave you even lower than you were before, no doubt necessitating another candy bar or espresso shot before long just to get back to normal. If this sounds familiar, you’re caught in a trap. But there is an escape.

Skip the caffeinated beverages and sugary snacks and try something new. Fill the fridge in the break room with fruit, vegetables, and lean proteins (grilled chicken, smoked salmon, and low-fat dairy products, for example) to eat in combination when you need a boost. Don’t forget water; you’ll need plenty to hydrate you when you start going through caffeine withdrawals. All of these items will help to regulate your crazed system and get you to a place where normal, healthy foods provide all the energy you need.

Exercise

Finally, you should make time to squeeze some exercise into your daily routine. It’s not like you need a friend in health care administration to tell you that exercise is beneficial; you already know. What you may not realize is that it has been shown to boost energy. So in addition to helping you look great by shedding a few extra pounds and feel great with a rush of endorphins, it also boosts your heart rate, bringing more oxygen to every part of your body, which increases your physical energy and your mental acuity. And as your level of fitness increases, you will expend less energy on everyday tasks, leaving you with some to spare.

Sarah Danielson is a freelance writer and part time student. In her spare time she likes to go hiking and help with an animal rescue out of Los Angeles, California.

This particular TED Talks featured Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist. At age 37 she suffered a stroke which completely rendered the left side of her brain useless. She moved into a world dominated by her right brain. In other words, she moved into a world of pure energy. She had no physical form and processed the world as pure spirit. In her own words she lived in Nirvana.

I encourage you to watch the entire video and I won’t give away any more details, but her message at the end is what I want to elaborate on.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dr. Taylor did not have a choice about living as pure spirit. But while she was, she was connected to anything and everything. There was no boundary between her physical body and the world around her. She was the world around her. What she discovered is that we are all capable of living as pure spirit. It’s all there in the right hand side of the brain.

In my post on Intuition versus Logic, I suggest that you need more than the left hand side of your brain for solving problems.

What if we made a concentrated effort to access more of the right hand side of our brain and more often?

What if through techniques like meditation and Tarot we learned how to easily jump from the left side to the right side of the brain?

What if just for a minute, or even a fleeting moment, we experienced the Nirvana Dr. Taylor knows exists?

What would we bring back to the left hand side of our brain we ‘returned’?

Well, if we bring back even an ounze of the insight and passion and compassion that Dr. Taylor brought back from her journey, I would say it is worth the effort.

Wouldn’t you?

A bit more on this …

Ever wondered about the science behind mediation. Have a listen to my short audio explanation.

Catch the Wave with Meditation

Chick Night is defined as “any evening that creates the opportunity to bond with other Chicks for the purpose of mutual self-discovery.” This guidebook explains the 10 simple rules for Chick Nights and how to make these wonderful evenings happen.

My favorite three rules are:

1. All Chick Nights Must Involve Chocolate.

“Chocolate serves as a reminder that you deserve to be treated.”

2. The Confidentiality Clause.

“Being able to actually say what you are thinking is an extremely liberating experience. . . . You can speak from your heart, completely uncensored.”

3. Never Pass Up a Chance to Have Fun.

“Remember, anything that makes you laugh is fun—no matter how silly or ridiculous or undignified it seems.”

Like the idea of Chick Nights so far? The other rules are just as easy to follow. As I read on, I kept thinking how Kleven is encouraging readers to create a group in the off line world that mirrors our online Silver and Grace community.

Beyond the joy of sharing time with close friends, Kleven reminds us how important bonding with other women is throughout our lives. She also makes an important point about how many women “lose themselves” as they take on multiple roles in society today — wife, mother, grandmother, employee, employer, volunteer and/or business owner. This book will help all women examine that concept in their own lives, and how they can rediscover their authentic selves by sharing experiences with a caring circle of girlfriends.

Kleven mixes how-to advice with personal stories from her own life, from other women in her Chick Night group, as well as close family friends. These different voices all add to the richness of this book.

You can download a free chapter at MyChickNight.com.

Linda Abbit is an official Silver & Grace Book Reviewer. Linda’s experience as a family caregiver led to her to start her business, TenderLovingEldercare.com. When not working, she loves dancing, yoga, reading and going to the theater.

Products for Women by Women

The Beginner’s Guide to Chick Night has the Silver & Grace Seal of Approval as an excellent book for women. It is available through Amazon.

The Beginner’s Guide to Chick Night

You might also enjoy

The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship
I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway: A Memoir

For more Silver & Grace approved books check out Eliza’s Recommendations.

A bit more on community …

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jeanne was describing how to do the warm up stretches. The great thing about the audio clips is Jeanne is stretching and running right along with you. Well, there Jeanne was stretching and talking and all of a sudden I heard

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffftttttttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhh

I stopped in my tracks as my brain attempted to process what that was.

Did Jeanne … did she … did she just …. FART?

Then I heard Jeanne calmly state “Oh, that happens sometimes. Now rock back on your left heel.”

How incredibly wonderful. Yes, that’s right, wonderful. And here is why.

Up until fairly recently, I avoided displaying all normal bodily functions in public. If anybody had heard me fart, I would have been mortified.

But not anymore.

Not like I go around cutting one all the time. I do try to hold it in when in public, but if it slips out it slips out. I just say excuse me, and carry on.

I have come to accept that real women do fart. Sometimes those farts smell bad.

Real women also have vaginal farts. Any woman who does yoga knows this.

Real women sweat when they have worked hard, or are feeling stressed. This can show up in armpit moisture and body odour.

Real women have snot pouring out of their nose when they are bawling.

Real women burp. Heck, sometimes they even belch.

I must say, it is a huge relief to take a cue from the boys and just accept bodily functions as normal. We have enough to concerns ourselves with. The occasional escaped …

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffftttttttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhh

… is pretty insignifant.

Your turn

I was raised with this little poem

Better to squelch a belch and die in pain
Then belch a belch and die in shame

Are you a squelcher or a belcher?

• I am not a church goer
• I do not belong to any charitable organizations
• I am not a member of a sorority
• I do not belong to club or group

Of course, now I belong to the Silver & Grace community and I cannot imagine my life without it. But, I still didn’t fully get the importance of community until my dad’s accident.

He is at home, paralyzed from the neck down and bed ridden. My mother has a team of support workers, but she is the primary care giver. To say it is exhausting for her is an understatement. But she is not isolated, because over their lifetime my parents have been involved in communities, both social and professional.

The 10th Line Ladies is a perfect example. My mother implemented a much loved tradition of inviting all the women on her country road over for an annual meal. These ladies took care of the house and cats when my parents were stuck in Spain where the accident occurred. These ladies have driven my mother to hospital visits when she was too tired or too scared to cope.

An even longer standing community was started sixty years ago, when my grandfather brought the property my parents now live at. He encouraged his gang from Port Credit to buy properties on the same stretch of country road. He and my grandmother created a weekend community of fun and frivolity. The children of that original gang, my mother’s peers, are showing up on her doorstep with food and very important hugs. Their adult children, my peers, are coming along too to help out.

I am not saying that we should belong to a community just in case we experience hardship. But in times of hardship, that is when the incredible support of a community is glaringly evident.

I have a community of women at my government job. We cry and laugh together. We have pooled our resources and sent women on spa weekends when we knew they were at their wits end. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, these women have joined the greater Silver & Grace community. And although the Silver & Grace community is wide spread and global, I experience the same crying and laughing together, and the same caring gestures.

I may not have been part of a community in the past, but I sure am now.I may not have had any desire for community in the past, but I sure do now.

I can’t imagine not belonging to a community.

My theory is, this is part of me becoming darn near 50. After years of struggling to have a connection with myself, now that I do, I crave the connection with others.

And I belong to a pretty awesome community chock full of connection.

Be part of my book Darn Near 50!

Your valuable feedback will be used indirectly in the content of the book, or directly as quotes. Before the book is published, I will contact contributors to verify if they want to be anonymous, or if their real names can be used.

Ready?

• What are your thoughts on belonging to a community?
• Do you? Have you always? Is this relatively new?
• What do you get from belonging to a community?

You can provide your thoughts

• right here in the comment section
• email me directly at eliza@silverandgrace.com
• by using this convenient form

A little bit more on this

I invite you to watch this video honouring the Silver & Grace Community.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We meet Bliss Rowland in her studio where her adept fingers are putting the last swirl on …

“A life-sized impressionistic piece, the sculpture possessed the flowing curves and hollows representative of the reclining figure of a naked woman. Partially submerged by an advancing tide, the woman appeared as an integral part of the ebb and flow of the sea. Bliss knew she was her own worst critic. She demanded the very best of herself, and she never settled for less.”

Ah the keys words are ebb and flow and as undertows surface we must find out if her personal strength to overcome her mother’s emotional fragility and her father Cyrus, an international figure who has purposely created emotional distance, is enough.

Enter Micah Holbrook…oh ladies, you will love getting to know him!! At once, we are flawlessly blended into their story but we never feel like an intruder upon their lives. Will their duty-bound past, Micah’s recent accident and now polished-pride keep Bliss at bay or does his hot-heat passion free him from his tightly interpreted world?

OH so much to find out; the quest is worth every twist and turn. These highly complex characters and beautifully evolving story are perfect for the big screen, in the meantime, its memorable characters and story continues to play out in my heart and head.

HEARTBREAKER was my first foray into the Romantic genre, but if the wonderful Laura Taylor has written it, I am so ready for another adventure of the soul. It is certain that HEARTBREAKER will light up your world from the inside out…its sensuality is deeply moving (literally and oh honey, this is oh so ooooohh la la as in Yummy and oh so well done!) which she tells you up front.

HEARTBREAKER The Warrior goes beyond a summer read; it is a timeless story for all seasons.

Sharyn Jordan is an official Silver & Grace book reviewer. When she is not reading, she teaching the world about Feng Shui. Check out her own great book, The Home Whisperer.

Products for Women by Women

Heartbreaker has the Silver & Grace Seal of Approval as an excellent book for women. It is available through Amazon.

Heartbreaker (The Warriors)

You might also enjoy

Bonds of Blood &Spirit: Loyalties
The Widow’s Walk League

For more Silver & Grace approved books check out Eliza’s Recommendations.

“You can’t always find a way to solve a problem by using logical or rational thinking.”

Seems obvious, but is it?

Our society loves facts and statistics. Here are just a few examples:

• games like Trivial Pursuit and Cranium
• sports stats like batting average and shots on goal
• the average number of people who <fill in the blank with just about anything>
• mean rainfall for the month May
• the lowest recorded temperature in Canada; -77.5 °C (-108 °F) by the way, which is freaking cold!

In business we have process flows and decision trees and financial forecasts based on the previous years’ actuals.

Facts. Logic. Rational thinking.

I used to try and solve all my problems by thinking them out. I wrote down facts. I analyzed pros and cons.

This worked okay for deciding which car to buy, but that was about it. In fact, I made some pretty bad decisions. Ridiculously horrible decisions.

The problem was, I was only working with half the information. Maybe even less.

I was not accounting for:

• how I feel about something
• how other people feel about something

Nor was I connecting the dots between seemingly disparate events and experiences.

Until the day I picked up a Tarot deck and discovered a whole wealth of information available to me that I didn’t know existed. Then I added in meditation which added even more. Next I added in stream of consciousness writing. Even more information.

What all these techniques have in common is they accessed my intuition and they freed me up to think creatively. It turns out, my facts where just the tip of the iceberg. Good information, but only what I could see on the surface.

For truly inspired problem solving, I now start with the facts, then springboard from there to my intuition. In fact, ever since I started doing that, I have made some really awesome decisions.

How do you approach problem solving? From a place a logic? From a place of intuition? Or a blend of both?

A bit more on this …

For more on how I use Tarot to help solve problems watch this fun video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bon Courage – Go with Courage We hope this book inspires you to live your dreams and create a life full of joie de vivre.
Suzanne and Jean.

Awesome quotes head up each chapter, and Life Guidebook Tips follow the end of their story.

This fun, informative book chronicling much of the journey of this dynamic couple gave me a wonderful read, and I hope you’ll pick it up to enjoy it as much or more than I did.

This tale is one fast-reading, well-written joy-ride filled with honesty, humor, and delicious descriptions of French meals, plus the inner and outer terrain of this international couple and their daughter Zoe Pascale.

American Suzanne and South African Jean were living one of our typical American dreams in the Bay Area. Big jobs, big travel, big
bills, a lifestyle they were pretty invested in.

Along came the death of Suzanne’s wonderful business partner, the intense tragedy of 9/11, and the late pregnancy and birth of their daughter Zoe.

After too many airplanes to catch, too many walks in the park by their nanny and not them, and a feeling that life could be more fun than this well-worn path, they began to explore options.

Lo and behold, they realized how lit up they became when they considered going to France for a year, expanding on their summer jaunts to the 11th century home they’d bought years before.

This forward thinking duo created a notebook of tasks to turn their dream into a reality, and they set about doing one thing at a time until they could move to the French countryside to settle in for a year. (One year that grows into three, and then some more French living for their family….)

I imagine this book resonated so much with me, since I’m a Francophile from way back . In second grade, my class was given French lessons, and Le Petite Prince is an absolute favorite of mine.

Then there’s the gratitude, creativity, and love-the-moment philosophies of the authors, which deeply match my own.

They want to inspire joyful living, and my work in the world is to inspire peace and joy. We match!

May you find joy in your life every day, and may you pick up Courage and Croissants, an inspiring and well-written story of living your dreams.

Joy Resor is a Silver & Grace book reviewer. When she is not reading, she is spreading joy and providing beautiful batik scarves at Joy On Your Shoulders.

Products for Women by Women

Courage & Croissants has the Silver & Grace Seal of Approval as an excellent book for women. It is available through Amazon.

Courage and Croissants, Inspiring Joyful Living, A Story and Life Guidebook

You might also enjoy

The Beauty Blueprint: 8 Steps to Building the Life and Look of Your Dreams
The Diva Doctrine: 16 Universal Principles Every Woman Needs to Know

For more Silver & Grace approved books check out Eliza’s Recommendations.

I am going to walk through the top 10 reasons that were listed and see if anything resonates. If you struggle to ‘stick it out’, I invite you to do some analysis right along with me.

1. You don’t have time

I would like to tell myself I don’t have time, but there is that little voice inside my head that coughs out a “Bullshit”. Of course I have time. It’s a matter of not doing something else for those thirty minutes a day.

2. You can’t make the commitment to stick to an exercise routine

Hm, no I can’t even pretend to use that as an excuse. Of course I can make the commitment. My problem is I do not make the commitment.

3. Exercise HURTS!

Psshhh … three children delivered naturally. A tattoo on my inner wrist. Exercise pain? Comparatively small potatoes.

4. You can’t seem to stay motivated to continue working out.

Yep! This one is a big one. The couch is comfortable. Piddling away on the computer is addictive. It’s raining. It’s cold. I have PMS. When it comes to exercising, I am the Queen of Excuse Management.

5. You want to exercise but you have to take care fo the kids and family

Do cats count? No, eh?

6. You don’t know how to exercise

Nope, can’t add this to my list of excuses. I have yoga instructional videos, books on running, and now even my very own virtual running coach, Jeanne Andrus from Ignite!

7. You’re not seeing any changes in your body

Well, that’s part of it, but I know that it is because I never stick it out long enough for my body to transform.

8. You can’t afford a gym membership

I don’t need a gym membership. The two exercise styles I like are running and yoga. Both I can do at home. Besides, if I liked gyms, I could afford the membership.

9. You’ve tried to exercise but you keep quitting

To be honest, not sure why this is in the list. This isn’t an excuse. This is a fact. I keep quitting.

10. You really hate to exercise

Now here is the really stupid thing. I love to exercise. When I am actually doing it, I love it. Now how ridiculous is that?

Okay, so out of the ten reasons listed in the article, the primary reason for me boils down to not staying motivated.

Help me out, ladies!

How do you stay motivated?

In the author’s, Alyson Mead’s, life it was a win /win tool to have this knowledge and in reading the book I have had a lesson or two unfold based on  the theme each chapter, covering a month and astrological sign for that month. The book starts with July/Leo and ends with the twelfth chapter titled June/Cancer. If you are reading the book with no knowledge of Tarot and understand astrology a little, the story will still lure you.

Her own journey to find Mr. Right kept my interest and the final epilogue clears up any question as to how it all turned out for her.

The final paragraph in the epilogue let’s you know why you should read Searching for Sassy. It says

“Our fascination with other worlds, with spirits and messages from the other side, isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. Feed a psychic, or better yet, develop you own intuition. Someday, it may help you make decisions, cope with difficulty and yes, even manifest a new relationship.”

Please read and enjoy Searching for Sassy by Alyson Mead.

Kathy Weber is a very active member of the Silver & Grace community and one of our official Book Reviewers. She is 64 years old, retired and loves to read informative, self help, nonfiction books. She is a wife, mother, and grandmother and now enjoys her free time to do what makes her happy. Reading is one of them.

Products for Women

Searching for Sassy has the Silver & Grace Seal of Approval as an excellent book for women. It is available through Amazon.

Searching For Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of Life, Lust & Love

You might also enjoy

The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship
I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway: A Memoir

For more Silver & Grace approved books check out Eliza’s Recommendations.