I saw this article on the Kashi site and found it to be interesting. I hope you like it. The source is: www.Kashi.com.

A friend of mine, humorist Loretta LaRoche, poses an interesting question: “What will your tombstone say? ‘Got it all done, dead anyway’?” If you sometimes think that the complexities of life are unmanageable, and that your energy reserves have bottomed out, take heart. There’s hope for putting the juice back into your life.

Here are five simple keys for banishing burnout and reclaiming the creativity, contentment and empowerment that are your birthright as a human being.

1. Recognition: On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is juicy, alive, vibrant, curious and joyful and 1 is depressed, lethargic, irritable and tense, where are you? If you learn to monitor yourself during the day, and do something to fill yourself up when you’re running on empty, you’ll be much happier and more efficient. What’s your number? Need to take a 10‐minute walk, do some yoga stretches at the computer, eat a healthy snack, pat that poodle or call a friend? Try keeping your wellness score above 6, and you’ll find yourself in the flow zone where inspiration flourishes and you feel content, present and ready to live at your peak.

2. Friendship: Human beings are social animals, and research shows that connection to loved ones is one of the most important keys to health and well‐being. Friendship is a great way to reduce your stress. You may not have time during the day for an extended visit, but even a short, meaningful conversation can revive your spirit and remind you that at the end of the day, love is what matters most.

3. Gratitude: When you wake up in the morning, where does your mind go? If it jumps into the garbage bin and starts to list your worries, the neural pathways of “fight or flight” kick in. Gratitude engages more creative brain circuits. Think of three things you are grateful for before you even get out of bed. At the end of the day, think of at least one thing that surprised or delighted you. Research shows that grateful people are more motivated, efficient, healthy and happy.

4. Centering: Whether it is through meditation, mindfulness, tai chi, yoga, prayer or being in nature, centering restores you in body, mind and soul. Anything that deflects you from the relentless, judgmental inner dialogue elicits the relaxation response, a brain state that is the opposite of the body’s stress response. When you realize that although you have thoughts, you are not your thoughts, you can get in touch with the peaceful center at your core and live creatively in the present moment.

5. Exercise and Diet: One of the best cures for burnout is getting out of your mind into your body. Even 30 minutes of walking five days a week can reduce stress, tone your muscles and rejuvenate your spirit. A diet rich in fruits and vegetables reduces the incidence of heart disease and cancer, helps slow down the aging process, helps keeps your weight at an optimal level and boosts your mood.

Now that’s not so hard, is it? Just remember these five keys, and you can change your life!

Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., is a world‐renowned expert in the mind/body connection and the author or co‐author of more than 13 acclaimed books and numerous audio and video programs. Her book Inner Peace for Busy People includes 52 tips for banishing burnout.

I like the Kashi website because they post some really good articles. Here’s one I particularly liked. The The source is: www.Kashi.com.

Scientists study the world and report their findings. Unfortunately, many of them let it go at that, even though the implications of their discoveries may point directly to the need for action.

When scientists reported that the massive beds of the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera — the equivalent of terrestrial rain forests in their ability to take in CO2, produce oxygen and provide rich habitat — were disappearing from the coastal waters of Southern California, the cause proved hard to pinpoint. Restoration of the beds was urgently needed, but techniques to restore kelp forests proved elusive.

Becoming “gardeners of the sea”

This situation inspired the formation of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), whose initial mission was to shorten the distance between research and restoration in the marine environment. AMRF tested hypotheses, grew kelp spores, transplanted kelp and removed urban runoff sediments from rocky kelp habitat to find out what was hindering our native marine forest.

What we found is that restoration is complex. Restoring even a single component of an ecosystem that’s been altered in so many ways requires making up for missing features. An overabundance of purple urchins and wavy top turban snails wouldn’t let the baby kelp get started. The natural predators of the urchins and snails — large lobsters and sheepshead wrasses — had been fished off. We had to become “gardeners of the sea” and move the snails and urchins out.

Evaluating the ocean’s plastic load

In 1997 we discovered another altered ecosystem purely by chance. We had entered our aluminum‐hulled, catamaran sailing research vessel, Alguita (Spanish for “little kelp plant”), in the Transpac yacht race from Los Angeles to Honolulu to test a new mast and rig design. The return route normally avoids an area of light winds called the “North Pacific High” by going north up to the latitude of Washington before heading east to the Pacific coast. Because we had twin diesels and extra fuel, we decided to cross the doldrums under power.

This was the year of the largest El Niño on record, and for over a week, we had extremely light winds. For that entire time, the crew couldn’t come on deck without seeing pieces of plastic debris floating by. Not big mats of trash, but a piece here and there. This set off alarm bells, and a scientific team came back two years later aboard Alguita to evaluate just how big a garbage problem there was out in the rotating currents known as the subtropical gyre. We trawled nets designed to catch zooplankton, the tiny drifting animals that form the base of marine food webs, and we were astonished to find that we caught more plastic bits than plankton.

Do your part: Recycle

Since that time, AMRF has focused on monitoring the extent of the plastic debris problem and searching for ways to keep plastics from entering the ocean in the first place. Ingestion of small plastics by filter feeders at the base of the food pyramid is known to occur, which raises toxicity concerns since these animals are known to absorb and concentrate man‐made pollutants from seawater. Filter feeders can also activate some of the toxic compounds added to plastics in manufacturing, making these chemicals bio‐available to other organisms.

As plastics have assumed the role of “lubricant of globalization,” allowing manufactured goods to reach their destination in pristine condition, the pollution of the marine environment by plastics has accelerated. Less than five percent of plastics are recycled worldwide, and the ocean is downhill from everywhere — in other words, the final repository for our trash. Furthermore, plastics do not degrade fully in the environment, and even after plastics photo‐degrade into individual molecules, the polymers must decay further before turning back into the universal building blocks CO2 and H2O, from whence they came.

Captain Charles Moore is the founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Learn more about the Campaign Against the Plastic Plague (CAPP) and get practical tips on reducing your use of plastic from the Earth Resource Foundation.