New Year's Resolutions: 20 Ways To Add More To Your Life

When I qualified as a Doctor at 25 years old, I thought I knew everything there was to know about health and medicine. By the age of 30, I realized my medical training was limited and I didn't really know much about health and wellness.

So I went on a journey of discovery to expand my horizons and studied acupuncture, Chinese medicine, Functional medicine, nutrition, yoga and Buddhism. By 50, I realized my life training was limited too as my daughter (a teenager at the time) was pointing out "how stupid" I was. And now that I am 55, I realize I have amassed a lot of knowledge but have so much more to learn.

As I get older and hopefully wiser with every year, certain insights become clearer. Here are some of them gleaned from the wisdom I have gained from 30 years of marriage, having a 22-year-old daughter, 30 years of practicing medicine and being a perpetual student of life.

20 New Year Resolutions

1. More Real Food, Less "Food-like Substances",
2. More Fruit and Vegetables, Less Sugar, Wheat and Corn
3. More Organic, Less Toxic
4. More Chewing, Less Eating
5. More Water, Less Soda
6. More Recycling, Less Waste
7. More Walking, Less Driving
8. More Exercising, Less Watching TV
9. More Outdoors, Less Indoors
10. More Sleep, Less Worry
11. More Calm, Less Chaos
12. More Being, Less Doing
13. More Consciousness, Less Ignorance
14. More Smiles, Less Anger
15. More Love, Less Hatred
16. More Play, Less Serious
17. More Letting Go, Less Holding On
18. More Forgiving, Less Blaming
19. More Generosity, Less Greed
20. More Ubuntu, Less Me!

Ubuntu means what makes us human is the humanity we show each other. It is a Xhosa (South African) word and philosophy emphasizing community, sharing and generosity.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu says
"Ubuntu is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being able to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe that a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms and therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in belonging".

Let 2010 be the year of UBUNTU

--------

Frank Lipman MD is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of Integrative and Functional Medicine. A practicing physician, he is the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in NYC, where for over 20 years his personal blend of healing has helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and recover their zest for life.

To bring his approach to a wider audience and not just his NYC patients, he recently created Eleven Eleven Wellness and Total Renewal, a leading edge integrative health program to get your health on track.

He is the author of REVIVE: Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again (2009) (previously called SPENT) and TOTAL RENEWAL: 7 key steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health (2003).

Dr. Lipman lectures throughout the world on chronic disease prevention and is very involved with and sits on the Board of two non profits from his native South Africa, the Ubuntu Education Fund and Monkeybiz. He also has an intense passion for World music and is a frustrated DJ.

To hang with Frank, visit his blog, follow him on Twitter or join his Facebook community today.

 

 

 

Follow Dr. Frank Lipman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drfranklipman