A Million Trees A Million Dreams

Dear Parent,

Have you ever thought about how the earth is going to look in your childrens' generation? If you think about it, we are using the earth's natural resources at a much faster rate than they can handle, and it is only getting worse - here is an excerpt of what is happening according to the film The Eleventh Hour.

The film posits that in many ways, humanity has detached itself from nature, and grown accustomed to using without thinking to manage the earth's resources.

"The big rupture came in the 1800s, with the steam engine, the fossil fuel age, the industrial revolution," says Nathan Gardels, author, editor and Media Fellow of the World Economic Forum. "This was a great rupture from earlier forms and rhythms of life, which were generally regenerative. What happened after the industrial revolution was that nature was converted to a resource and that resource was seen as, essentially, eternally abundant. This led to the idea, and the conception behind progress which is: limitless growth, limitless expansion."

"Finding coal here, and little bit of oil there, and between that and the agricultural revolution, slowly our population crept up until we hit our fist one billion people," says Thom Hartmann, a best-selling author and progressive radio talk show host. "It didn't take us a hundred thousand years to go from one billion to two billion. Our second billion only took us a hundred and thirty years. We hit two billion people in 1930. Our third billion took only 30 years, 1960. It's amazing when you think about it. When John Kennedy was inaugurated, there were half as many people on the planet as there are today."

http://wip.warnerbros.com/11thhour/

Watch this and then Enter Site - it is fascinating and telling. There is a LOT of information on what is happening to the planet on a daily basis due to our overconsumption and disregard for the earth and its natural resources....but there is also great HOPE that we can turn this around and give back our time and resources to make the earth a better, cleaner, greener place to live.

How do I do this in my own little world? By sharing awareness with everyone I can, and by using natural, organic, biodegradable products in my home, through Shaklee, founded in 1956.

Shaklee is the first company in the world to obtain Climate Neutral certification and totally offset its C02 emissions, resulting in a net zero impact on the environment.

Look at their environmental milestones here -
http://www.shaklee.com/causes_achievements.shtml

and our connection with Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2004.
http://www.shaklee.com/causes_miltrees.shtml

Dr. Wangari Maathai is one of the speakers in this film and she is an advocate for a greener earth. As it says on that site, "Inspired by the visionary works of 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai and her Green Belt Movement, Shaklee began a tree-planting campaign across the United States and Canada in April 2006, encouraging the company's 750,000 Members and Distributors to organize tree-planting events at the grass roots level in their respective communities."

Try out the Carbon Calculator on the site to calculate your impact on the planet, and then check out her site - http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/a.php?id=148

One example of what Shaklee does is that every time someone buys a Global Ambassador pak from Shaklee, the company will plant 5 trees in that person's name, just to offset the carbon emissions of shipping your pak!

If you are interested in learning more, comment here or email me at laurelea2006@yahoo.com.

Thanks for caring! :)

Get clean presentation

Check out this SlideShare Presentation on Natural Cleaners and how they are better and more effective for you and your family. And save over $3200 a year in cleaning supplies! :)

Get clean presentation

View more presentations from Laurel Nicolosi. (tags: nature science)

Turn back the hands of time?

I see that it is all the rage today to "stay young" - so many anti-aging creams out there and so many miracle drinks that promise to stop the hands of time. With so many baby boomers increasingly getting older and wanting to find ways to stay young and vibrant, one company has delivered on that promise with a new liquid supplement called Vivix that has enough resverotrol in a 30 day supply to replace 3,000 glasses of red wine!! :) Through years of clinical research and testing, they have finally given us what is needed and guarantee the supply through cooperation with the growers of the vineyards this natural supplement comes from.

See what the excitement is about and if you want more information, you are welcome to see more at www.shaklee.net/bestlifepossible.

It won't turn back the hands of time, but it will make time a little kinder and your body a lot healthier!

http://content.shaklee.com/shaklee/flash/vivix.html

Why do I do it?

Why do I do it? The things I don't like doing...the things that are unpleasant. The things that HAVE to be done. Whatever it is....dishes, laundry, cleaning, paying bills, making a budget. Calling that person I have to resolve that conflict with. Calling my bank to dispute a charge. Oh and here's a good one - making a plan of action to REALLY get my business in motion.

What??

Yea, it might be a little unpleasant to think about what NEEDS to be done in order to insure success in your business, but it is necessary. Why do we do these things? Because if we don't, not only do WE suffer, but our family suffers. Our relationships suffer. Our finances suffer. If things don't get done, then we have gone backwards instead of forwards. Laziness becomes more and more the "norm" and we don't even realize it at first. We think, well, it's ok to sleep in. It's ok to take a day off.....and if we have been working hard, it is. BUT if we haven't, then there is no reason to reward ourselves for work that has not been accomplished yet!

Why did you mother tell you to do your homework before you went out to play? Because she knew that if you played until dark, you would be too tired to come in and do your homework, and it wouldn't get done. Or there would be a fight to get it done.

Why do I do the dishes after dinner? Because if I don't, they will be sitting there until I do them. I won't be able to use the sink or the dishes until they are clean, and everyone in the house has to work around those dirty dishes. Or dirty clothes in the closet. Or that dirty bathroom. Or whatever it is in your life that needs to be cleaned out, refreshed, brushed off...maybe it is your self esteem. Maybe you've been battered and bruised. Maybe you've had people made promises to you that didn't turn out to be true. Maybe someone has promised you the world but gave you a lot less in return...

So pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and say OK. This is the day I will do it for myself. This is the day that I will do the things I don't want to do, but NEED to do to move myself, my business, my life forward. I will clean the attic and find that old stuff I've been collecting that I can use for my business...I will find those contacts that I have been putting off getting in touch with. I will start writing that blog I promised myself I would for months now :)

So what is it for you?

Find out what it is that you do for your family that they appreciate. That if you DIDN'T do, they would suffer from it. And if they don't tell you, then list the things you do that go unnoticed but you do because you love them.

And if you do have some "unfinished" business....things that are dormant but can come to life again as soon as you breathe into them, find them and bring them to life.

You'll be living better than you thought possible....this is what dreams are made of :)

What do we need to teach the children of today?

Today I was motivated by my own teaching experience and love of nature to write this as if I was talking to a child - but it applies to all of us no matter how young or old we are!

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What do we need to teach the children of today?

We need to teach them about how to prepare for their future, as citizens, as consumers, as residents of this planet. Don't throw litter or waste resources - we only have one earth to live on and we need to treat it with respect and care. Use natural and organic products over any other type of product - science and nature come together in perfect ways to take care of our homes, our bodies, and our environment. If we take care of the environment, it will take care of us - give us good air to breathe, good water to drink, good food to eat and a long healthy life.

We need to teach them to value people and relationships - do unto others as you would have them do unto you - if you want a friend, be a friend - and all these valuable lessons they learn early in life. Be sure to remember these lessons as you head off into the business world and you will be more profitable than if you try to push people out of your way in your attempt to get ahead of others.

Respect your elders and learn from their wisdom - they have been in your shoes and now they can teach you what they have learned. If you make a mistake, fix it...if you hurt someone's feelings, apologize and make amends. We cannot live without each other and we need to build bridges wherever we can, not tear them down and run away, and hope our mistakes don't catch up with us someday....you might not see if now, but whatever you sow, you will reap, and you want to reap a beautiful harvest of love and good deeds for the next generation.

So go out and plant a seed of love in someone else's heart today, and day by day, you will have more friends than you can measure.

Best Life Possible: Making it easy to "go green"!

http://hubpages.com/hub/Making-Going-Green-a-Lot-Easier

Making it easy to "go green"!

"Going Green" - what is it? And how do we do it? Why does it make a difference?

These days "going green" is like a Hollywood craze. Seeing celebrities cruising around in a Prius or saving the rainforest...some people care more about the habitats in Antartica or in the jungle. Some people love to be in nature and live on roots and berries. Others of us just want to do small things to help our little part of the planet be less toxic.

I am one of those "other" people. I like the products I use to be free of things I can't pronounce, and warning labels, and smells I don't recognize. I don't want to worry that my vitamins are doing nothing for me except going right thru me, a waste of my time and energy.

I needed to find out more for myself on what "going green" meant to other people. I ask here in what I think is a "common sense" approach to why people pick "natural" vs. "storebrand" - is it time, convenience, not enough knowledge? I hope I am able to shed some light on the subject here on this video - thanks for watching :)

So - if we believe it IS important, how do we do it? I decided to look online...

I found out there is a lot out there these days to look at. I found one former investigative reporter with a common sense approach -she and her husband appeared on Oprah not too long ago talking about their favorite natural cleaners - I think she does a great job describing how we can help the planet and our own home by using natural organic cleaners and other products as well as organic food without pesticides -

To see her talking about her philosophy on video, and why she wrote this book - go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eFu_ShwOfM&eurl=http://www.myspace.com/laurelsenergy&feature=player_embedded

You'll see it on my site - then come back if you'd like to read an excerpt from it here.

Thanks for watching!

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Here is an excerpt from her new book - "Green Goes With Everything" --

By Sloan Barnett
Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781416578451

INTRODUCTION

Let's begin by agreeing that we are all creatures of habit. We do what we do every day because that's the way we've always done it. It takes a big reason for us to make big changes in our lives. And the reason is usually very personal.

Much to my surprise, I've become a green activist. I wasn't always. Oh sure, I cared a lot about our planet and the changes we've made to it. But it wasn't clear to me what I could do to make a difference. Then something very big and very personal happened and I saw the light, and the light was green.

Here's my story.

My son Spencer had just turned three when, one day, I noticed he was coughing a lot. At first, I didn't think anything of it. Kids get sick. I told him to lie down, thinking he'd be fine -- it was just a cough. A short time later I realized that his heart was pounding, as if it were trying to beat right out of his chest. Terrified, my husband Roger and I rushed him to the hospital. The emergency room doctors placed our son on oxygen and gave him strong steroids to help clear his airways. We spent the next two nights in the intensive care unit. The doctors told us he had something called reactive airways dysfunction syndrome -- a form of asthma.

Asthma? How did our little boy develop asthma? We'd never heard of asthma coming on so suddenly. We were confused and sick with worry.

We talked to our son's doctor. We talked to other doctors. We asked questions but never got satisfactory answers. Ultimately, we knew our son's condition had to be either genetic or environmental. Neither my husband nor I had any family history of asthma, going back for four generations. So we concluded the cause was environmental.

I've spent most of my career working as a consumer reporter, so I knew how to dive right in and begin researching. It didn't take long to discover that the United States is in the midst of an asthma epidemic. One of every thirteen school-age children in the United States has asthma. Asthma in children younger than five has increased 160 percent since 1980. Nine million U.S. children under the age of eighteen have been diagnosed with asthma. Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease in the United States, and it's the third leading cause of hospitalization among children younger than fifteen. The suspected cause of these stunning changes? At least six well-designed epidemiological studies have found one answer: a strong link between the use of certain cleaning products and asthma.1 That stopped me cold. The cause of my son's asthma may have been me. I may have been poisoning my own son.

At the time, Roger had just become chairman of Shaklee Corporation, the leading natural nutrition company in the United States. Shaklee also produces a line of natural, nontoxic cleaning products, and has since the 1960s. Shaklee was green when green was just a color and "biodegradable" was a word only scientists used. We started using Shaklee products exclusively, and Spencer has never again visited the emergency room. Coincidence? I don't think so, and once you've read this book, I don't think you will either.

After that scare, I went to work learning about living clean and green. Much of the information you need to get clean and green is out there, but we're all so busy we don't have time to weed through all that material on the Internet and in books. Plus, it's all so scientific, it's easy to lose your way.

Since my husband and I began our crusade to help others get clean, my family and friends have bombarded me with questions about everything from cleaning products to baby clothes. I found myself becoming the go-to person for all sorts of well-educated but woefully misinformed people. And the more questions they asked, the more I realized the depth of the need out there for information in plain English. The media assault us daily with scary statistics and dire warnings about harmful products. Sometimes the information is reliable, sometimes it's not. Who can hope to separate what's important and relevant from what's just sensational and frightening? I thought that if I could compile the most crucial information, make it accessible and user friendly, and maybe even a little entertaining, people would be able to absorb the message.

Writing the book you have in your hands became my mission.

......

When it comes to the environment -- and many other things, for that matter -- I think most people make choices based on three criteria: health, convenience, budget. Then, if their choice happens to be good for the planet too -- great. Bonus. Hard to think about melting glaciers when you're tired, hungry, and operating on a tight budget.

That's where this book comes in. It helps you make greener choices without sacrificing convenience and budget. More important, they'll be choices that will also be improving your family's health. And be warned: Once you get started, you won't be able to stop. There's a natural momentum that comes with doing the right thing for yourself and your family and your planet. You buy one nontoxic cleaning product, you start using one baby bottle made from materials that are safe for your infant, and the next thing you know you're recycling and riding a bike to work and buying organic cotton towels. I think helping the environment is a lot like working out. I always say that just putting on the workout clothes is something to be proud of. It's a step forward. That's the thing that matters: starting.

When I first thought of calling this book Get Clean, my mother told me she thought it sounded too much like a rehab book. I laughed. But now I realize she was on to something. This is a rehab book. It's life rehab. And though I can't help you kick all your bad habits, I hope to help you kick some of them.

So let's get started.

Copyright © 2008 by Sloan Barnett


Laurel - www.bestlifepossible.com