I saw a headline in the news: Extreme Juicing Kills Socialite. Wow. Before I go on I want to say this is not just a story in the news, it’s the life of another being who has passed. She had parents, a husband and children, and I have so much compassion for what they’re experiencing. Nothing I am about to write in any way reflects on this young woman’s life, the love of her family, or the pain that sudden death brings.

Extreme Juicing Kills … it’s a sensational headline for sure. The kind you look at without thinking much and say, “I better get some meat and potatoes today.” Right?

But let’s look a little deeper. Let’s use the critical skills we all have and think about this.

Fruits and vegetables killed a woman? Does that make any sense? Even more ridiculous is that people are dying everywhere we look from diet and lifestyle issues and we never see headlines like this about the obvious killers. Let’s try a few on that, while fabricated, have a bit more scientific and logical probability than the juicing one:

Extreme Happy Meal-ing Kills Family of Four

Extreme Soda-ing Kills Children Around the Globe

Extreme Carmel Frappuccino-ing Kills Secretary

Extreme Bacon and Egg-ing Kills Sunday Brunchers

Or my favorite:

Extreme Headline Reading Kills Brain Cells

Funny, right? And not.

Because somewhere, someone who really needs a reset of their body, someone who has struggled with their weight and health and was just about to try a fresh green juice, read that actual headline and got just enough reinforcement of their negative programming to say, “Better just have bacon and eggs today.”

And that’s criminal.

There is not a fresh green juice in the world that has ever killed anyone. In fact, on the day I read this headline my two oldest children were on Day 3 of a five-day juice fast they had chosen to do for themselves. Wait … lemme check … yep, they’re still alive.

Side-by-side with that headline was another one. It read, “Oldest Woman Alive Shares Her Secret: Eating Sushi and Sleeping.” In the article the 116-year-old woman says, “… You have to learn to relax.” And the article clarifies that she eats sushi once a month and takes long naps each day.

Extreme Napping Prevents Death?

Every time one of these amazing people who has lived past one hundred gives an interview, they say the same thing. In their own words and languages, they say, “Enjoy life, eat moderately, take a walk and a nap, and have fun.”

And so we, and the headlines, extreme that up into Power Walking, Power Napping, and Extreme Juicing. Then we get sick and say, “It must have been all that juicing and walking that killed the poor guy. If only he’d had a Big Mac and watched a little more Kardashians, he’d be here today.”

Okay, enough sarcasm. I have spent the last several years learning all I could from teachers in health, psychology, spirituality, fitness, science, etc. etc. And the one thing they all taught me, the one common thread to every modality, is stress and fear kill you. We want a more complex answer, we want the answer to be anything else, but it’s not. It’s simple and we know it.

We are all made up of cells and those cells live in a community we call our body. What we call our body is actually a giant ecosystem of cells, somewhere around 50 trillion of them. Just like our communities, cells live and work together in systems we call a hand or a foot or a lung or a brain. When the cells are relaxed, open, and free they perform their functions well, with ease and flow and body functions. When the cells are stressed, constricted, and closed off, the functions of the body slow down and we experience stagnation and inflammation. Then we get sick.

To make it really simple:

Health = Happy Cells

Sickness = Fearful Cells

Remember these cells are you. What the cells of your body experience, you experience. And what you experience, the cells in your body experience.

So back to our examples above: the 116-year-old lady whose motto is, “… learn to relax” and the young model who juiced and juiced to lose weight, look great, and be the perfect model. Isn’t it easy to see what’s going on? One the one hand the 116-year-old lady represents a community of relaxed cells that sleep when they should, enjoy life, and eat the occasional sushi dinner. On the other hand, the stressed-out young woman represents a community of cells that live in constant fear of being overweight; they are stressed out and underfed, not because of juicing, but because of the quantity of nutrients consumed. One is the oldest person alive and one is a family tragedy.

The challenge with the above statement is that it provokes a whole new wave of self-defeating thought as we all start beating ourselves up because we’re stressed out and overworked and under-loved; then we layer this newfound guilt on top of the old layer and we just feel worse and make ourselves sick.

The antidote to all this, the true secret of life, the real fountain of youth, is not found in any book, blog, or diet. It’s found buried under all this crap we call the real world. It’s the simple truth that we are loved. That message can transform seven billion people as well. It’s our one secret weapon and it’s free and available to us all equally, right now.

Extreme Self-loving Saves Lives

Today, right now, wherever you are, take a tiny moment for yourself, even if it’s 30 seconds. Take a nice deep breath, a long exhale, and give yourself the gift of a simple, “I love you.” If that doesn’t resonate with you, that’s okay, self-love isn’t always an easy thing to come by. So try wishing it for yourself: “I wish you love.” Maybe that’s an easier message with which to connect. Find the way of giving yourself love that truly feels right for you.

Now go to your Outlook calendar or iPhone or however you schedule your day and put in a reoccurring appointment. Call it whatever you want so you’ll remember but your secretary won’t think you’ve totally lost it. Remember we are trying to reduce stress, so make it easy. Make this appointment a few times a day to start, maybe three or four, and use it to take a deep breath and give yourself the message of self-love — “I wish you love.”

This probably feels weird, maybe even a waste of time … but it works. Trust me, I know. Just start slowly with simple acts of kindness toward yourself, a breath, an I Love You. Over time you’ll begin to notice a difference in your life as deep inside you as your cells, one by one, transform, open, and experience the flow and proper function that love brings.

None of us wants to be the next tragic headline, we all want to be healthy and happy and loved. We are great at taking the bull by the horns in our work and when it comes to others. For a few moments each day, let the bull go and use that time to give the gift of love to YOU.

And for the next few days as we practice this, let’s add one more: “I wish you love” for the family of the young woman who passed and for all of us who have felt the pain and fear and loss of death. We are all in this together. Not one of us is any different. We are 50 trillion cells times seven billion people — and we all just want to be loved.

Big hugs of love,

Jason

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