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Follow Your Dreams While You Follow the Military!™
Join Holly and Kathie to learn how to Increase Your Energy, Decrease Your Stress, and Go for Your Dreams! An "as we can get to it" newsletter/ezine with ideas, resources, stories and inspiration so you
can Follow Your Dreams While You Follow the Military™ written by military spouses for
military spouses!

Ezine Military Volume 11 - 2003

In This Issue:
Big news and we need your help!
Pen in appointments with yourself
Tea for healthy hearts
A tip for moms


First, WELCOME to all of you who signed up during our workshops in Grafenwohr, Vilseck, Hohenfels and Bad Aibling in May. We had a great time and have enjoyed answering your individual questions by email. Keep them coming. And let us hear what you are doing differently since the workshop. We love those stories, big and little. There is a chance we might be doing workshops in other Germany communities this fall. We’ll let you know when we know details so you can tell your friends.

Big News and We Need Your Help!
We have something we want to celebrate with you. We have just been hired by the Army, AirForce, Marine and Navy Times newspapers to write a regular column for military spouses. The title of the columns will be Married to Military. Our first article should hit the newsstands on June 30th. So go and pick up your copy of the newspaper at the end of the month, and let us know what you think. They are going to run our column every other week (twice a month), somewhere in the inside of the paper (not back page). As part of our agreement with the newspaper, we will answer questions from military spouses as they write in questions. So come on and write us at the newspaper (but wait until the column gets started to be sure they keep this email address for it).: marriedtomilitary@atpco.com

We know you have questions and we know that if no one writes in they may not continue the column (that’s how the publishing world works. They want to know people are reading it and are interested.) We’d love for you to tell your friends about it, military spouses in all the services. And write in any comments or questions.
And remember you can always write us with your own personal dream/goals questions at kathie@jumpintolife.net

We are all in this together, and it's a lot more fun when we can help each other along as we journey through this challenging lifestyle.

Pen in Appointments with Yourself
I learn a lot in life from the novels I read. A while back I read The Ladies Lunch by Patricia O’Brien. One quote stood out for me and ended up in my journal. "We fill our datebooks with non-stop appointments— but we pencil in our needs. Anything penciled in can always be postponed." Isn’t that true? We ink in all those appointments with doctors and teachers; we ink in all the required social events; we ink in the kid’s soccer games and friend’s birthday parties. Most of us don’t even get around to penciling in our needs, much less inking them in. We keep those in our heads and hearts and on our backburners. And then we wonder how we ended up so stressed out.
So what is it we keep postponing?
— Time with friends
— Alone time
— Naps
— Gardening
— Non-structured time with our kids
— Pampering
— Exercise
— Creative pursuits
— Reading for fun

Make a list for yourself of some of those needs that you keep ignoring. Pull out your pen and calendar and ink in some appointments with yourself. And while you are at it, you might start using a pencil when you write down all those appointments with others. Then each week as you do your planning, really look at those appointments and see if they are worth changing to ink. Maybe your quality of life would improve dramatically (or even in small ways) by erasing one or more of them.
One thing I’ve learned is this. Often, I have an appointment scheduled with someone, something we scheduled months in advance. By the time the date rolls around, it may not make sense for me to keep the appointment. Of course, I dread calling to cancel out on someone. But almost every time that I do, the other person says, "Oh, thank you for calling, I was thinking how crazy that appointment was going to make my life right now." And even if they don’t, changing my life from crazy to sane makes the phone call worth making.

Tea for Healthy Hearts
Earlier this year we both made the decision to quit our daily (and heavy) coffee habit and switch to tea. The evidence kept pointing to the fact that coffee was adding stress to our lives (like we need to do anything ourselves to add to that!) and that tea has multiple benefits, from warding off cancer to preventing rheumatoid arthritis to even weight loss (green tea).

Now there is a four year study from Harvard that shows that for heart-attack survivors, moderate (fewer than 14 cups of tea a week) to heavy(14 or more) tea drinkers had lower death rates than non-tea-drinkers. They had respectively 28 percent and 44 percent lower mortality rates than non-tea drinkers! In a separate six-year study, Dutch researchers found that drinking black and green tea may help prevent heart disease in healthy individuals. Those who drank about 3 cups of tea a day were 43 percent less likely to have a heart attack and 70 percent less likely to die from one than non-tea drinkers. And if you aren’t a tea lover (yet!) and three cups sounds like a lot, take heart from a study done with 680 men and women that showed that just one cup of black tea a day was enough to lower heart attack risk by 44%.

We’ve both quit the daily coffee habit and now drink 3 or more cups of tea a day. Now mind you, that doesn’t mean we don’t still occasionally enjoy a cup of coffee — especially when it’s partnered with German Kuchen (cake) at a café. (Somehow for us tea and chocolate just doesn’t have the same appeal.) But we reach for tea in the morning and decaf tea after lunch.

If you don’t think you like tea, try again. There are so many different kinds available that there is bound to be one that you like. Kathie is an Earl Grey fan while Holly’s family swears by Red Rose. And for those who say you don’t like green tea, after trying many different ones she didn’t like at all, Kathie enjoys Good Earth’s Green Tea Blend with Lemongrass.
For more reasons, read our longer note on tea in our January 2003 ezine at http://www.jumpintolife.net/ezmilvol7.html

TOP

A Tip for Moms
Those of you who have been to our workshops know that we often bring out a hula hoop. And we often have hula hoop contests.

Well, while we were hula hooping in Grafenwohr, Germany in May, one woman came up to share a tip. We apologize for forgetting and not writing down her name. If you are reading this and it’s your tip, please write us so we can credit you if we use it in future workshops or in a column!

Anyway here’s the tip.
Do you ever have the experience of telling your youngster to clean up their room or the mess in the living room, just to be greeted with a blank stare — or an ineffectual attempt to pick up? It may be the "clean up this mess" is too big a task for them to even know where to start. (If you’d look at my office right now or peek into our garage, you’ll know that I often feel the same way!) So here’s the idea. Throw a hula hoop over one area of the mess. Then say, "clean up everything inside the hula hoop." When they’ve accomplished that move it to another area and repeat the request. Manageable. An end state they can visualize. Try it.
In fact, I think I’ll throw the hula hoop over one part of my office and see what I can clean up!

Copyright 2003 Hightower/Scherer

Share your story:
As part of our research for the Follow Your Dreams
While You Follow the Military™ book, we are
collecting stories of military spouses who have done
just that — created a life, a program, a business, a
career that allows them to pursue their passion as
they live this military life. We’ll share some of
these stories in future issues.

Do you have a dream to share? Either, one you want
help with, or a success story to inspire other military
spouses? Email us at kathie@jumpintolife.net (and
you’ll get a free Joyful Living booklet in thanks for
writing.)

Fun Products
While we work on our Follow Your Dreams While
You Follow the Military‘ book, we have some other
products that can help you create and live your
dream! To order any of these call Kathie tollfree at
866-569-5695 or email or fax in an order— see
contact info at the bottom. And, yes, I can take Visa
or MC (does that make us professional or what?)

The easiest way to order is to go to the product part
of the website, www.jumpintolife.net, and download
an order form to fax or mail or call in.

Creative Living Audiotape Set: (2 tapes,12 minutes)
- on the joyful living concept & goal achieving
tools, tips & resources) $12

Your Enchanted Life: A Journal of Discovery &
Delight (a playbook full of exercises & action
steps) $18

Simple Joys: Little Things That Make a BIG
Difference (a pocket-size book with one idea per
page) $6
*similar ideas in a booklet that can mail in a #10
envelope are in the Joyful Living Booklet $3

Magic Rainbow Glasses
(see the good in Everything) $6

As Is (pewter pins)
Show the world you are already quite wonderful just
the way you are – faults and all! $25

A Follow Your Dreams While You Follow the
Military Workshop at your post/base?
We do four-hour workshops for military spouses.
(These have been called different things in the past
— Joyful Living, Creative Living, Jump Into Life —
we’ve finally settled on what it’s really About —
Follow Your Dream While You Follow the Military.)
We’d love to do all day sessions or 2-3 day retreats
someday too. We have LOTS of information to
share.

Here’s what other military spouses are saying:
"Wunderbar! I have gained worthwhile & valuable
information on how to turn my dreams into reality.
I wish I had a seminar like this to attend 15 years
ago." –Gwendolyn A. Williams

"This was the best thing that happened to me
in Germany!"—Alicka Ampry-Samuel
If you know someone who hires trainers for your
base (often the Family Advocacy Office or ACS),
send us a name and address and we will mail a full
information packet. We’d love to come to your
location.

Feel free to forward this ezine to other military
spouses. We are also happy to have you use any of
the articles in your newsletters providing you ask us
first and then provide us with a copy for our records
and celebration!


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Contact Us:
Kathie Hightower & Holly Scherer
Follow Your Dreams While You Follow the
Military Seminars
kathie@jumpintolife.net
2908 N. Warner Street, Tacoma, Wa 98407;
Tollfree: 866-569-5695;253-761-8161;
fax253-759-4009

Or contact Holly directly in Memphis at
901-756-7391 or email her at
schererjh@earthlink.net

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