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I’m doing a 30 day detox starting January 1st if you would like to join me. The program is based on Dr. Kelly Brogan‘s protocol.  I will be giving recipes and more instructions leading up to our start.

Here’s the 30 day detox in a nutshell:

What to drink:

Nothing but pure filtered water. (NOT tap water)

No coffee, tea, alcohol, soda or fruit drinks of any kind – you may have to wean yourself off caffeine the week prior to beginning the cleanse.

Start your day with 2 glasses of water (add sea salt, organic apple cider vinegar and lemon if you’d like) then drink a full glass between meals

What to eat:

The following items can be consumed liberally:

• Treats: honey – try to make it local and raw, dark chocolate, pure maple syrup, fruit
• Healthy fats: organic virgin coconut oil, red palm oil, grass-fed and organic or pasture-fed and ghee, flax oil, macadamia nut oil, avocado, coconut, olives, nuts and nut butters, lard, tallow, and seeds, flax seeds sunflower seeds pumpkin seeds sesame seeds, chia seeds.
• Herbs seasonings and condiments, there are virtually no restrictions on herbs and Seasonings so long as they are fresh, organic and free of dyes in artificial colorings. Toss out your ketchup and any condiments laced with gluten, soy, and sugar or that’s been processed in a plant with wheat and soy. It’s fine to enjoy mustard, horseradish, tapenade, guacamole, and salsa if they are free of processed ingredients.
• Whole fruits and vegetables,
• Protein, whole pastured eggs, Wildfish, shellfish and mollusks, grass-fed meat, foul, poultry, and Fork, Wild game

What to avoid:

All gluten and dairy (I know, I can hear the groans now, nothing sends me running to indulge in milk and cookies like the thought of going gluten and dairy free, but it’s only for 30 days. We can do it!

Avoid most forms of sugar

Unhealthy fats – processed vegetable oils

White rice, white potatoes, corn and beans. These foods can be reintroduced after the 30 days.

What this cleanse is not: I’m not going to post a bunch of substitute recipes, like how to make a gluten-free pizza crust from ground up-cauliflower. Gross. We are going to stick with the basics. Simple recipes to make your life easier, not more complicated.

I will post recipes, tips, and encouragement before and during the 30 days. I’ll post the exact plan for four weeks in December, and then repeat those posts as we do the program in January.

If you are interested, please watch this 35 minute interview with Dr. Kelly Brogan, it is what got me interested in looking into her work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U4Hprs8QPs

 “It’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how much money you keep”. Said every financial book I’ve ever read.

You must put money away. Let me repeat this: You must save money. This is not optional. Saving money is one of the best ways you can become independent and able to care for yourself and others.

So, how much money should you save? Well, you should save 10% at the very least. If you’re not doing this, you need to get right with your money and start right away.

Here are some real things people have said to me that scare the daylights out of me:

This is someone who went into retirement, then entered the workforce again: “We made a lot of money, but we spent it all.”

This is someone in his 30s who makes good money in the tech field: “I keep getting raises, but we never seem to have more money.”

Does it sound impossible to save 10%? What about saving half of your money? There is a whole movement online of folks who are doing it.

For your enjoyment, please check out:

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/

https://www.madfientist.com/

https://www.biggerpockets.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/MikeAndLaurenTV

https://www.coachcarson.com/

And for more light reading, please check out:

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. This is the first financial literacy book I read, and it lit a fire under me, and I’ve been reading, and planning, and saving ever since.

And The Millionaire Teacher, The nine rules to wealth you should have learned in school. By Andrew Hallam. This is the second book I read, and is just as exciting. Hallam talks about how he became a millionaire on a teacher’s salary. 

There are many more where that came from. These are just a few of my faves.

It can be done folks. It just takes a little will power and creativity.

**I may or may not like the subject of personal finance. Just sayin’

To the young people in my life and yours:

What do you think your youth is for? Is it just for having fun and seeing how much money you can get from your parents?

No, it is practice time. What are you practicing? Becoming an adult. What do you see the adults in your life doing? Do they sit around all day and play video games, or wait for someone to tell them what to do?

No, they work, take action, make decisions,  yard work, grocery shop, and pay bills. And of course, they have fun too. They take breaks, and vacations, and sit to read or play a video game with you.

So, I ask you, I beg you, please, keep your areas clean, learn how to cook and care for things. Garden. Learn skills, so that when you cross into adulthood, you can just keep walking at the same pace you have been, and adulthood doesn’t sink you like a coastal storm.

Practice, young padawan, practice.

Someone’s ever said to you, “I’ve heard your kind of hardcore.”

You’ve heard yourself say, “I try to be laid back”

You return from vacation to work, things don’t piss you off as easily, and you think, “Oh, maybe vacation is useful.”

You work 16 hour days 7 days a week, and think, I can do this forever.

A friend says of someone else, “She runs until she makes herself throw up, can you believe that?!” And you think, I get it, just a little bit. I get it.

You have to train yourself how to relax and enjoy downtime and social situations that have no purpose.

You work out as hard as you can, so that you’re not as hardcore with the people in your life. You’re in a group exercise class and the teacher tells you that you’re going to do Sprint intervals, and as you’re doing them, the other members of the class comment that you’re really sprinting, and you say, “I thought that’s what we were supposed to do”. But then the others pick it up.

You don’t let your kindergartener play outside with friends after school because, “There are things to get done”.

You’ve argued with your high school English teacher to raise your grade from an A- to an A. You don’t read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom because you think, “I’m already the most up-tight mom I know.

Here’s the video version of this post if you’d rather:

You might be a Type A personality if…

Every industry is being disrupted, including what it means to be a celebrity. American celebrities used to be so out of reach from the population. They were silent gods and goddesses that lived on screens and the covers of glossy magazines. But as the internet has eroded the barrier of entry into creating and sharing creative work, we now have a different generation of “celebrity.”

There are youtubers with anywhere from 2,000 to 2,000,000 subscribers who are creating amazing content and enjoying varying degrees of notoriety for their work. And that is just one example. People are creating blogs and online businesses, and offering their amazing gifts to their audience.

One great thing that has come from this shift is that the “new celebrities” are more open about the struggles of creation. I’ve heard many of today’s thought leaders talk about their inner critic, that voice inside their head that whispers, “you’re not good enough,” “you have no business pretending to know what you are doing,” “you’re a fraud, and soon enough everyone is going to find you out.”

My inner critic most often tells me that I’m not working hard enough. I’m here to tell you that my superpower is working. I can work until my fingers bleed. I can work until the only thing stopping me is that the sun has gone down, and even then, we better turn the car’s headlights on so we can git her done. But if I stop working for a moment, the voice inside my head sounds the alarm that I should be working now, and forever.

So how do we silence this inner critic? I don’t know that we can. But we can recognize it for what it is. It’s just a thought, generated by our ancient brain that is trying to protect us from doing anything new or bold. So just like in yoga or meditation when a thought arises, we can observe it, and let it go. We can say thank you to our brains for trying to protect us, but we are just fine. We are good enough, we work hard enough. We push through despite the inner critic, and I believe this in turn will help us continue to do our best work when we face outward criticism as well. Because if we are doing brave, bold, honest work, then surely that criticism will come too.

So, inner critic, whose the fraud now?