HEALTHY LIVING TIPS

Like many kids, my son Eric has crooked teeth.  About a year ago we started along the orthodontics route and he got a Herbst appliance.  In case you’re not an orthodontist, a Herbst appliance is designed to do some preliminary moving and adjusting before “real braces”.  Unlike a retainer it is permanent which means it gets cemented in. 

The big day arrived and it was time to remove the appliance.  For the first time in over a year Eric had nothing but teeth in his mouth.  As Eric and I were driving home from the orthodontist’s office I asked him how his mouth felt.  He said that it felt great.  He went onto say that he was surprised it felt so good because he was so used to the appliance he had really forgotten it was there.  The Herbst not only didn’t bother him but he didn’t even notice it in his mouth anymore.  So if it wasn’t bothering him why should it feel so good without it?  Why should he suddenly feel so free?

Eric’s Herbst appliance was clutter.  It may not seem like clutter but it was.  Clutter is the stuff that gets in your way.  Clutter takes your time, your space, your energy.  Eric had to learn to eat, talk, brush his teeth and yawn with his clutter in his way..  He had gotten so used to it that he didn’t notice the clutter until it was gone.

 

You may be so used to the way things are around you that you don’t realize how much energy you are really expending on clutter.  You may think that because you don’t acknowledge or pay attention to something it’s not costing you anything but it is.  In fact, every minute of every day you work hard to ignore the clutter and put tremendous effort behind finding ways to work around it.  Clutter causes you to make choices that you otherwise may not have made.  Clutter causes things to get backed up and then the pressure increases even more.  Ultimately, what really gets backed up is your life. 

 

When the clutter around you is gone you are free to choose what you want to do and what you want to say no to.  In fact, this is the part that thrills me the most when I work with my clients.  It’s when the realization strikes that it’s really not about getting organized but it’s about what happens when you stop putting up with the clutter.  You uncover yourself and discover what you really want out of life.  

 

One of my clients recently told me that he went through a stack of old ideas and notes he had laying around.  The notes he found were valid but felt stale to him.  He had never acted on any of them.  However, he found one idea that had been buried for over a year.  It wasn’t old or stale; in fact it really excited him.  He consciously decided to let go of all of the other ideas.  He went to work on this one idea immediately.  By getting rid of the clutter he was free to focus his time and attention on one project and created a brand new program for his business.

 

Another client of mine told me that as she de-cluttered her craft closet.  She discarded old projects, project ideas and supplies.  She got rid of things that were still “good” but didn’t fit within her life anymore.  What she experienced wasn’t loss but a sense of openness and new possibilities. 

 

Here’s my challenge to you:

Look around your space, your office, your home, even your car…shut off your internal filters. What clutter do you see around you that you’ve been ignoring?  Think about the clutter around you.  What is the clutter keeping you from doing?  What “work-arounds” have you created for yourself? Pick one or two areas of clutter that you’ve been actively ignoring.  Think about what small steps you can take to reduce the clutter and experience relief and take the small steps.  

Eric doesn’t have a choice.  Eric is going to get his real braces in just a couple of weeks.  He will have to learn new ways to brush his teeth, talk and eat corn on the cob.  Yes, he’ll get used to them and before he knows it he won’t even feel them anymore, but I can promise you this, after his braces have done their work and the clutter in his mouth is gone he’ll reveal an even more incredible smile!

If you’re ready to stop putting up with your clutter and uncover what you really want to be doing go ahead and take my challenge.  You’ll be amazed at what you discover.



By: Carrie Greene

About the Author:

FREE TRIAL TEETH WHITENING

Parents might have to scrimp on summer vacation plans because they know that there will be a lot of expenses involved in their children going back to school. The parents might choose to reduce some of those expenses by getting their children’s medical checkups done right after school lets out.

When there are several children going back to school, the parents know that office visits will have to be scheduled to meet the family budget. Most of the children will need inoculations and certificates before they will be allowed in class. Some medical practices will allow group visits for families with lots of children because they give them discounts on the charges for an office visit.

Some children might need to see the dentist and the orthodontist too, because they have reached that time in life where braces must be placed on their teeth to ensure that they grow straight and correctly. Some of the insurance that the family has will pay for a yearly check-up at the dentist but many plans do not give very much toward a visit to an orthodontist.

These visits to the orthodontist must be spaced out throughout the summer because parents can not deal with such a surmountable amount of money at one time. They now that they must still have money left over for summer fun and activities that they have planned for the family throughout the summer. Parents are very conscious on how fast their kids grow and when most expenses will hit them the hardest.

Many of the public schools are converting their dress codes to allow students to wear the same clothing to school. Parents used to shop for school clothes throughout the summer finding bargains on shoes, shirts and pants at many places that they visit. The uniforms allow the parents to get firm figures on the expenses needed for each item in the uniform and to adjust the family budget to get the children in the proper uniform before school starts.

Many private schools charge a monthly tuition that parents must pay for even during the summer months. The parents are also faced with expenses such as miscellaneous fees, building fees, and the cost of books if they have children in the upper level classes. The expenses for books alone will cause some parents to want to take out a loan at the bank, and when these expenses are coupled with clothing expenses and uniforms it gets to the point that some parents simply want to weep.

The expenses involved in getting children ready to go back to school should never take away from the joy of seeing a child enter class for the first time. Many schools allow parents to take photographs with the teacher and make it such an enjoyable event that parents quickly forget the expenses that got the child to school. The child will look so cute in their school clothes and the little lunch box at their side, that the parent will have to ask permission to join the child for lunch every once in a while.



By: Jim Brown

About the Author:

FREE TRIAL TEETH WHITENING