Back to School Resolutions

Back to School Resolutions are the product of the mental reset button we feel each September

Back to School Resolutions Are All About Going Forward

Forget New Years resolutions - Back to School resolutions are the ones I always make. They do not necessarily relate to being a parent either, since my son is almost finished university and doesn't need me buying his clothes or packing his lunches anymore. They are about my own return to school, my own wellness over 40, and my own improvement in achieving wellness goals and maximizing life in a new age zone.

What are back to school resolutions, anyway? They are the product of the mental reset button we have from decades of closing the chapter of summer and embarking on a return to school. They are from our childhood excitement about starting a fresh new grade each September with a fresh new pencil case full of sharpened pencils and a new 3-ring binder with paper, dividers and a box of reinforcements on hand. (hmm, what I really mean here is a new laptop, cell phone, music and clothes...)

Being a Better Everything

I still get excited every September about starting something fresh! But now my resolutions are about passing to the next proverbial grade of life, not about passing from grade 7 to grade 8. I still think that my current resolutions are influenced by a mindset from three or four decades of deciding to be a "better everything" in order to have a good year - the year from September to June, that is.

Here are 7 quick ideas to kick start your own career, financial, environmental, or wellness aspirations:

• Whether you're a new grad or facing a working retirement, pursue the next level of your career by upgrading your skills in a way that's relevant to the marketplace as well as your own personality

• If you really want to get to work feeling grounded and able to take charge of your own productivity, walk at least part of the way to work

• Buy fresh food and cook it

• Whether you have kids yet or not, think about them and their kids of the future - reduce your car usage and if possible get rid of your car and use transit

• Save money painlessly by managing your personal cash flow

• Consider chemical-free skin care products - it's hard to believe that many of us smoked cigarettes at our office computers in the 80s; well, in the future people will look back incredulously at the amount of chemicals we put on our face daily when there were other alternatives out there

• Try something out of character and take up dancing

Health Benefits of Swimming

The health benefits of swimming include providing a good cardio workout and building core strength

Swimming Results in Trimmer Hips and Waistlines

Whether you swim in an outdoor pool, lake or indoor pool, the health benefits of swimming cannot be overlooked. Swimming not only builds lean muscle and boosts metabolism, it also gives a killer cardio workout if you do the freestyle stroke.

Swimming makes us feel and look younger

What I like about swimming is that it's a relaxing form of exercise and it's free.

It's hard to find an unhappy person at any outdoor swimming pool. There's something natural about using every muscle in your body while having a surreal weightlessness. It's one place that we can experience the sensation of floating.

Since swimming is good for every age group, it's also an activity that's multi-generational. It's not unusual to see retired people, business people, family people, children and babies all playing together in the middle of the city.

Swimming Reduces the Risk of Heart Disease, Diabetes and Stroke

Beyond the alleviation of stress and its relaxing effects, swimming has other hard-core health benefits:

• reduces our risk of getting heart disease, diabetes or stroke
• prolongs life
• improves flexibility and coordination
• improves balance and posture
• low risk of bone, joint or muscle injury due to weightlessness in water
• low-impact
• builds lean muscle and boosts metabolism
• builds core strength
• results in trimmer waists and hips
• makes us feel and look younger

Digital Media Defies Generational Boundaries

Learning Digital as a Tool of Communication

A new dawn of digital media would happen when everyone can use it expressively

Digital media, like a language, is a tool of communication and expression. What you say within it is still central to its value, and substance is still all. Although 'the medium is the message' to the extent that technology influences how messages are perceived, you still need to start with the message - and content is never dominated by one particular generation.

Is Learning Digital an Advancement or Conformity? 

Can digital marketing only be properly understood and managed by millennials because they been raised in a digital world? Just reading titles like this make we wonder whether learning digital is an advancement or has just become another way of being a conformist:

• "The Disconnect Between Aging Management and the Younger Workforce"
• "New Digital Influencers: The Coming Youthquake"
• "Meet Generation C: The Connected Customers"

Managing Digital and Social Not a Competition Between Generations

Being connected and getting involved in social media doesn't have to be defined by age. Some studies indicate that it seems to be defined more by income and education than by generation. In a study published in the May issue of Poetics, a Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts, sociologist Jen Schradie found that "college graduates are 1.5 times more likely to be bloggers than are high school graduates; twice as likely to post photos and videos and three times more likely to post an online rating or comments." The digital divide isn't about millennials and boomers; it's more about the haves and have-nots.

Reduce Car Usage to Increase Wellness

Reducing car usage improves air quality and slows global warming

Reducing Car Usage Helpful for Wellness

Most of us are aware that wellness is linked to our car usage. A 2013 report from Toronto's Medical Officer of Health about the impact of transportation on health and the environment has urged this city to generate funds without delay for the proposed expansion of transportation infrastructure. Many people in the Greater Toronto Area cannot give up their cars because they have no other means of getting where they need to go throughout the normal course of their day. One wonders how the major city within the GTA region of 6 million people can still have only two subway lines to get suburbanites to the city core.

The study reports that "traffic-related pollution caused about 440 premature deaths and 1,700 hospitalizations each year in Toronto. Mortality related costs associated with traffic pollution in Toronto were estimated at $2.2 billion each year. A 30% reduction in motor vehicle emissions in Toronto that could be achieved through various measures that reduce reliance on the private automobile could prevent about 200 premature deaths and result in 900 million dollars in health benefits annually."  It goes on to say that "Physical activity associated with walking, cycling and taking transit reduces deaths related to chronic diseases and the risk of illnesses such as strokes, heart attacks, obesity, and diabetes, which are among the top ten causes of death in Toronto."

 In a recent commentary in the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders stated that "it is becoming increasingly apparent that the growing frequency and intensity of windstorms, floods, hurricanes and extremes of heat and cold is a consequence of higher levels of weather-system volatility related to a warming trend caused in part by human-generated carbon emissions." He also urged that pretending to fix the weather won't remove our responsibility to deal with the problem at its root.

Look to Ourselves For Transportation & Environmental Health Initiatives

Although we are not accustomed to having to put limits on ourselves in order to make a better world, we can each do our part in modifying our lifestyle to reduce carbon emissions, as well as consume less energy. Environment Canada reports that 24% of our greenhouse gas emissions are from the transportation sector. Without changes from us, the health and wellness of our families will be comprised tomorrow. We won't be here when ocean levels could rise to the point where our own coastal cities are destroyed, or our children's grandchildren lose family members to weather disasters or the health effects of fracking and other techniques that provide our energy.

Tough Environmental Issues Need to be Tackled

Carbon, air quality, water, waste, land use, and biodiversity are discussed in a report card on the state of health across the Greater Toronto Area. The report card states that with high growth rates expected to continue, congestion and air pollution will get worse unless we plan for higher density living and strong, well-funded regional transportation systems. The GTA grew by over 477,000 people between 2006 and 2011 (Census Canada), mainly in low-density suburban areas.

The GTA is behind New York, Stockholm, the City of Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney in its dependence on cars.

The Nourishing Nature of Manitoulin Island

Being in Nature is Good For Wellness

Getting away from it all and spending a few days in the wilderness has a nourishing, regenerative quality to it. Whether you sleep under the stars or in a tent, there is nothing quite like the inherent communion with nature that happens when you go camping.

Manitoulin Island is just a 3 hr drive north of Toronto including a ferry ride (with cars on it)

Swimming in Lakes

During the last 20 years or so of camping, our family has spent days reveling in the incredibly white sands of Grand Beach, marvelled at the cleanliness of the northern shores of Lake Ontario at Sandbanks, felt the silky waves against our skin in Muskoka, and gazed in wonder at how far down you can see in the crystal clear water at Manitoulin Island.

Manitoulin's Untouched Quality Recalls a Time Gone By

Manitoulin Island has everything transported to it by boat, so there's a retro feel of going back in time when you experience its untouched quality. The icecream is home-made. Everything is a little slower there. The buildings quaintly recall a time gone by. And the combination of Northern Lights and lush sunsets are out of this world. It's hard to believe that clear skies like this occur just 3 hours away from the third largest city in North America.

Inner Peace From Being in Nature

There's something healing about cooking over an open fire, eating outside, swimming or hiking all day, or just relaxing for hours and watching the star-filled skies at night. I admit, my back always hurts in the morning after sleeping on a thin mattress in a tent, but it's worth the sense of peace with oneself that comes with giving up all of the creature comforts of the city.

Cold Summer Borshch

Cool Down With Vegetarian Borshch on a Hot Summer Day

4-5 beets
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 potato
1 onion
dill
1 can brown beans
sour cream

Chop up and cook beets, carrots, celery, potato, dill and onion in a large saucepan full of water. Add brown beans and simmer for 1-2 hours. Cool overnight in fridge. Blend mixture in a blender (optional). Add sour cream (or plain yogurt). Dress with more chopped dill and serve.

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Brings Out the Dancer in Everyone

Dancing on the Street is Good For the Soul

Toronto Salsa Festival on St. Clair Avenue July 14, 2013

Toronto’s famous Salsa Festival on St. Clair opens up the street to Latin life, food, music and dance in a participatory way. It’s not a performance, it’s natural theatre art better than anyone could create for the stage.

Age No Barrier in Street Dancing

Looking at today’s turn-out of urbanites happily stepping up their Salsa moves with partners, people of all ages sweating it out in 32° street heat with joyful abandon, there are many, many men and women who are doing salsa and loving it. They are young, old, from every corner of the world, mixed ethnicities, good dancers and bad dancers all strutting their stuff on the Toronto summer streets. 

Anyone at all can turn their romantic sides on and try to move to salsa music. Yesterday and today St. Clair Avenue, the street in my neighborhood where I buy my groceries in Toronto, was turned into a Salsa Festival, and the music transformed our hood into a South American paradise. It was soul-healing and uplifting to watch the whole city click up its heels to such joyful music.