So what is your “Story”?

We each have a story. Our stories are as individual as our fingerprint, iris map, or our facial structure. Our stories, however, are not based in palpable reality, they are totally made up from our own imaginations. Our stories will eventually become our reality, but they begin as just a judgment and a lie. Every story begins as a lie we tell ourselves.

I remember the story of a young traveling salesman who had a flat tire late one night in a remote area. He was traveling so late to try and make a vital appointment. It could be the turning point to his career. He walked down the road for about 2 hours before coming upon the first farm house. He hated to knock on a door at this horrible hour. It was 2:30 am. Many farmers had to get up in about 2 hours to start their long days. As he drew nearer to the farm, he started to imagine what the encounter with the farmer might be like. He could imagine the farmer being upset at being woken up so early. But he didn’t have a choice. He really needed someone’s help. He could imagine the farmer slamming the door on him in the midst of his explanation of need. How could the farmer be so uncaring. He needed help. He needed to get his tire changed so he can get to the appointment. It was vital for his career success. How could the farmer be so uncaring. What a jerk! He continued this story over and over again. By the time he finally knocked on the farmers door, he did so with considerable attitude. After several loud knocks a sleepy farmer came to the door only to have the salesman say, “Just go back to you warm bed. I don’t need your help anyway you jerk!” And he stormed away.

Our stories are almost always a lie. Why are they a lie? They are a lie because they are not based in true reality. They are created to justify our feelings, not things as they really are. When we tell ourselves a story, we are seeking to convince ourselves of a pattern of being, thinking or acting that does not serve our highest potential. We are choosing to view things differently than God views them. If God viewed life the way we do, God would feel about our life the way we do. Since I highly doubt God is either depressed, worn out, stressed, angry, or afraid, it would seem God looks at our life different than we do. Conversely if we view life the way God does, we would feel about life, in each of its occurrences, exactly the way God feels about it. So unless our attitude and feeling is one of love, which is God’s attitude, we are mistaking our experience. This miss taking of our experience then is supported through the story we live out of life. If we feel we have been taken advantage of, we will dramatize this belief. Stories are always based on one thing, fear. That is right, fear. We tell ourselves stories based on our greatest fears. What are yours?

The only reason you can’t have what you want in life is because of your story.

When we change we know we will have to shift our story to let life be congruent.

Our stories usually have a backdrop like one of the following premises.

Is your story:

• about your traumas?
• about your failures?
• about pain?
• about faith?
• about what others think of you?
• about a lack of belief in yourself?
• about your joys?
• about the delights in life?
• about your accomplishments?
• about your accoutrements?
• contained within the element of time in this life?
• wide as eternity with the full skyline of divine potential as your backdrop?

What do you want your story to be about? What do you want to defend with your thoughts and feelings? What do you want your life to be about? What do you want your health to be like?

If you aren’t sure what your story is, look at what stands out in your life. What are the things that hurt the most. What are the most motivating and gratifying. Be honest. Look at what has shaped your life more than anything else. This is the prime ingredient of your story.

Do you want that to change? Do you want your life and health to change? Then start today changing your story. Stop defending it. Decide what you want your life to be. It begins anew today.

Manipulators don’t value truth, just their story. They do not seek the new, the possible, the amazing reality that God sees. They seek to control the known experience. They are limited by their own desire for security, safety, comfort and the need to live around their pain. Pain becomes a huge boulder that has fallen through the roof into the middle of our home, and we seek to adapt to it rather than remove it or fix the house.

Diet soda drinkers may be even more likely to become overweight than people who drink sugar-filled, full-calorie soft drinks!

According to an 8-year review of diet and health parameters of nearly 1,200 people, a whopping 57 percent of those who drank two or more cans of diet soda ever day became overweight.

But among those who drank the same amount of full-calorie soda, only 47 percent became overweight.

Experts are unsure what explains the surprising results. They speculate that diet soda drinkers may feel they are saving calories on soda and therefore allow themselves to eat other more high-calorie foods.

Or there could be something in diet soda that increases hunger.

Cleaning bathrooms may become a thing of the past with new coatings that will do the job for you.

Researchers at the university of New South Wales are developing new coating they hope will be used for self-cleaning

A research team is studying tiny particles of titanium dioxide currently used on outdoor surfaces such as self-cleaning windows.

The particles work by absorbing ultraviolet light below a certain wavelength, exciting electrons and giving the particles an oxidising quality stronger than any commercial bleach.

These nanoparticles then kill microbes and break down organic compounds. Because surfaces coated with titanium dioxide have another property called 'superhydrophilicity' -- meaning droplets do not form --- water runs straight off the surface, washing as it goes.

Presently, titanium dioxide can only be activated by the UVA present in sunlight. But the research team is working on ways to activate titanium dioxide with indoor light.

The team is modifying titanium dioxide nanoparticles with other elements such as iron and nitrogen so they can absorb light at longer wavelengths.

Lab trials show that glass coated with the new nanoparticles can be activated by visible light for a lamp to kill Escherchia coli.

"If you've got this on tiles or the shower screens you don't need so many chemical agents," says Professor Amal.

- UNSW

Life Extension (www.lef.ord) postulates that high cholesterol is because the body is trying to compensate for the loss of the 'end' hormones: testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, etc that come from cholesterol. These and other hormones decrease with age (from 30-35 years old, at about 10% each decade) and the body will demand more of the 'mother lode' to be able to diversify it down into the end hormones that are essentially needed. Thus decreasing the cholesterol in folk would lower even more the hormones that are being produced, leading to more problems and of course more drugs to off-set the new symptoms. Once people find out they are worse on medical drugs/diet they try to go back to their previous way of living.

--Mike Feiner, D.C.