Family Time

November 23rd, 2010 by Regina Brett

Holidays can bring out the best and worst in a family and usually do a bit of both. Going back to your family home can be a welcome refuge or feel like a haunted house. 

 

I love my family but find I need to take extra care of me when we all gather. It's easy to drift off into the people I used to be and respond to others like a 6 year old whining or a 16 year old rebelling. 

 

How do you stay your best self over the holidays? Too often we neglect ourselves when the holidays hit. We stop exercising, taking daily time outdoors, eating healthy and getting calming doses of solitude.

 

The Plain Dealer offered some good tips today in a story by Diane Suchetka and Evelyn Theiss:

 

Step back and observe the chaos. Extract yourself and just watch and appreciate the humor and survival skills others use.

 

Have an escape plan ready. Volunteer to run out for ice, return library books, walk the dog.

 

Don't take anything personally.

 

Skip the gossip and the 100-year-old stories about who did what to whom way back when.

 

Lower your expectations. My goal? Aim for completion, not perfection.

 

Phone a friend. Have a 9-1-1 list of emergency friends who can restore you to sanity.

 

Take care of you. The care and feeding of you is 100 percent up to you, no one else.

 

My secret? Have a built in reward for you that no one else is in charge of and no one can take away. Bring a book of poetry you love and sneak off to reboot. Pack a favorite treat that you squirrel away by yourself to enjoy. I find that when I take care of me, I don't put that burden on anyone else and everyone ends up a lot happier.

 

 

 

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Another country

November 18th, 2010 by Regina Brett

Just heard that "God Never Blinks" will be published in Indonesia.

 

A bit thanks to everyone who forward my 50 life lessons to aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews and friends all over the globe.

 

The book is being published in 18 countries -- Thailand, Taiwan, China, Canada, Japan, Korea, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Brazil, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Russia, Latvia, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, the USA and Indonesia.

 

I got a copy of the British version. They weren't fond of God in the title so they renamed it, "Life's Little Detours: 50 Lessons to Find and Hold onto Happiness." And the cover is blue with road signs nailed on a pole pointing the way. Wonder what the book will look like in all those other countries.

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Your Brain On Technology

November 16th, 2010 by Regina Brett

His book has been called the Silent Spring for the literary mind.  Nicholas Carr wrote "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains" when he realized he no longer thinks the way he used to.

Carr gets fidgety reading books, notices his memory isn't as sharp and finds his concentration drifts away. In an article for the Atlantic magazine "Is Google Making us Stupid?" he wrote, "Over the past few years I've had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going -- so far as I can tell -- but it's changing."

 

He blames the internet, all that time online searching and surfing the web.

Carr joins me on "The Regina Brett Show" tonight at 7 on WKSU 89.7. Call in with your questions or comments at 888-WKSU-897 or email live during the show at regina@wksu.org

Margot Milcetich, a meditation and yoga instructor, also joins us to talk about the importance of doing one thing at a time, and shares how to feel connected in this digital age.

How are you keeping technology from tampering with your brain?

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Book store closing

November 12th, 2010 by Regina Brett

Another one bites the dust, and another one gone, and another one gone...

 

That song by Queen started playing in my head today when I heard about the closing of the local Joseph-Beth Booksellers at Legacy Village in Greater Cleveland. What an honor to have held a book signing there where so many great authors stopped.

 

The parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 

 

Barnes & Noble is for sale and one of our local Border's shut down. Fortunately, our independent smaller stores are holding on. Appletree, Macs Backs and Visible Voice continue to draw in readers and shoppers.

 

It's sad to think of a world without bookstores. It always inspired me just to walk around Joseph-Beth. It's like all the authors on all those shelves spoke to you, like in movie The Dead Poets Society. Only instead of whispering, "Carpe Diem, seize the day," the authors shouted, "Seize your pen and write!"

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Election Hangovers

November 3rd, 2010 by Regina Brett

Either you woke up today feeling ecstatic or miserable. No doubt many are experiencing post-election hangovers, either from drowning their sorrows or toasting their victories.

 

To the winners, congrats.

To the losers, thanks for fighting the good fight.

 

To the voters, your job isn't over. If you voted these people in office, make sure they follow through on all those promises they made to us all.

 

If you didn't vote for them, make sure they follow through on all those promises they made to us all.

 

Win or lose, we all still live in the greatest democracy on earth. Do your part to preserve it and celebrate it.

 

And to those who didn't vote, you don't get to complain.

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