On Monday, I talked about preparing for goal setting for the New Year, specifically, how to: 1. Set your intention for 2016. 2. Determine desired emotions for the coming year. 3. Identify your personal core values. 4. Spot the difference between push goals and pull goals. If you missed that post, it’s worth going back and reading it before going any further with this one. Click HERE for a refresher. If you’re ready, let’s proceed. Putting aside any "shoulds", push goals or re

It’s that time of year again! Now that Christmas is over many of us are thinking about New Year’s resolutions. I’d like to offer an alternative this year: How about setting some goals rather than making resolutions? The problem with resolutions is that they tend to be “shoulds,” or push goals Let me take a moment to explain: When you tell yourself that you “should” do something you are setting yourself up to fail because if you don't do the things that you decide you "should"

How often do you hear about the importance of nutrition for good health? I bet you hear it a lot. And that’s because nutrition is an important factor in maintaining a healthy body. In addition, more and more people are talking about how they healed their illnesses and health problems through nutrition. For some health conditions that is completely reasonable. If you have type II diabetes for example, there is a lot you can do with nutrition. If you have a more complicated hea

I feel discouraged this week. Discouraged and alone. I feel frustrated with my health conditions. I feel very stuck - like a hamster just slowly crawling in its wheel, like swimming in molasses. And no matter how slowly I'm moving, I still find myself needing to take long rest breaks. Over the past several years I’ve worked really hard to get to the point where I've been able to accept the state of my health and be pretty happy with my life, regardless of my medical condition

It’s Friday which means it’s time to discuss my love life. It seems my dating plans and strategies have stalled. This has been partly due to the craziness of the Christmas season and partly due to me feeling somewhat unenthusiastic about the online dating process. I’d still very much like to meet that special someone but I need to change my strategy in order to get different results. My current dating approach hasn’t worked as well as I had hoped. I admit, I have been very pa

If you are living with a chronic illness, there is a good chance that you have contemplated a cleanse, someone has suggested one to you, or you have actually done one. If you are considering a cleanse, especially with the new year approaching, allow me to give you a little more information on which to base your decision. Chronic conditions are most often a reflection of a deficiency in the body, rather than an excess. When you are deficient, they best strategy is to focus on

I’ve been living with chronic pain and illness for a long time – over 20 years. During that time, I’ve tried a multitude of different treatments and healing modalities. For a long time I refused to take prescription medication because I wanted to heal naturally since I kept hearing that natural medicine works, and it’s better than going the traditional route. What I really needed was serious medical attention, but I refused to acknowledge that was the case until my health sit

Scroll, scroll, click, click, swipe, swipe. This probably sounds familiar if you’re dating in today’s electronic age. Between online dating sites and dating apps we are inundated with options for how to meet potential partners. Not only that, there are numerous new sites and apps in the pipeline about to be launched that aim to provide us with yet more ways to meet people. These sites and apps present us with seeminly endless profiles of men and women looking to date, hook up

On Monday, I posted some basic dietary recommendations for those with chronic pain and illness. The goal of those recommendations is to support the reduction of inflammation in the body, which is very often related to chronic pain and illness. Today I’d like to talk a little bit more about dietary restrictions, because it becomes a big topic when you’re using nutrition to aid in healing. After becoming a Registered Holistic Nutritionist several years ago, I spent a fair amoun

Fun fact: in addition to being a Life Coach and Counsellor I’m also a Registered Holistic Nutritionist. While I don’t actively work specifically as a nutritionist, I do work holistically and often provide nutritional education and information in my sessions. In today’s post I thought I would talk about basic nutrition for those of us with chronic pain and illness. If you are not already using your diet to support improving your health, it’s a tool you might want to consider a