Life is constantly adjusting to internal and external pressures, relationships, and circumstances. Attitude is the main way we cope. The ideal of a perfect body and perfect health is something to aim for, even if we may never fully achieve them. Health, however, is a positive state, not just an absence of discomfort or a passive blessing. Start your mornings with daily positive affirmations that send out the vibration of what you want to create. This simple practice will set you up for success and give you energy. Take a mental timeout during your day when challenges, demands, crises, and chaos occur. Spend a minute or two reciting positive affirmations to center yourself and begin the next part of your day with clarity.

“Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

Say it out loud. Believe it as you put both your hands over your head and out to the sides, the power position.

“Taste the Now, smell the infinite, feel the smooth skin, hear the silence and the music of the wind, develop a Technicolor mind, be blinded by the rainbows, and see forever.” Satoru

This year is the 66^th anniversary of movie The Wizard of Oz. Know how I know that? This is gay history month. The Wizard of Oz is still very contemporary. Trump needs a brain, Vance needs a heart, and Congress needs courage. The buckshot stops here in a world facing borderless threats like climate change and emerging diseases. When you elect a criminal clown, you have a circus filled with amateur incompetent clowns, that burn down the tent and blame it on the previous performers. It’s like watching the Hindenburg crash into the titanic.

We must reckon forcefully with the idea that there is a right side and a wrong side. The keyword here is responsible for your actions, inactions, collusion, collaboration, speech, or silence. If you are aware of the problem but do nothing, you are complicit in accepting a system or situation that has twisted reality for their convenience. If you can act, even in a small way, and you will not, that is where complicity lives, and your inaction has moral consequences.

Listen to Ray Charles’s rendition of America.
Satoru

Trump’s stream-of-consciousness Twitter storms in response to any perceived slight were childish tantrums, indicating a lack of emotional maturity that put terror in the hearts of normal adults. Words matter, and humoring Trump and his power and control fantasies have had real-world consequences, dangerous ones. Trump’s poisonous Presidency will soon end. The crisis of the Republican Party has barely begun.

Congressman Adam Schiff warned the Senate at the end of the Trump president’s impeachment trial: “We must say enough—enough! He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.”

You get a circus when you elect a clown, and he will burn the tent down.

Starting

To begin, you need a clear-cut path to where we are going. People who don’t know where they are going, or have a plan, rarely get anywhere. People who do not know who they want to become, seldom develop the appropriate characteristic. This process is about creating results by design, not by coincidence. You have the capacity to influence your body and mind; you just have to learn how. Make some commitment to yourself. Goal setting goes far and beyond, just saying, “I want to lose weight,” You need to set a reasonable, specific, realistic goal. Your goal must also be measurable, attainable, practical, and within your daily time and financial constraints. For example, “I will lose one pound.” “I will drink a glass of water at three o’clock every day.” “I will walk around the block every evening after dinner.” Do these goals appear too simple or easy for you? Yes, they are. But they are achievable, and a start and the hardest thing to do is start. If you try to begin by saying, “I am going to the gym every day,” you will fail because the goal is unrealistic.

One small attainable step is the way to start, the emphasis being on starting.
Satoru

I try to be calm and understanding. But I have trouble being passive and accepting. Perhaps it is because of my upbringing in Brooklyn. There were always bullies. I was taught never to let a bully put his hand in your pockets, or else you would perpetually lose your lunch money. You had to fight. Even if you took a beating the bully would not bother you again. Never let a bully take what is yours, be it Putin, a business, a board of directors member, a politician, or corporate America. A punch in the face will change their plans. Complain, write a letter, get on the Internet, call a politician, pick a side, and do something.
Life is action.