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Rejuvenate Your Lifestyle at www.GOD-DESS.com

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The website featured in this month’s column started out as a suggestion from a reader. Global Organic Designs — Discovering Earth’s Science & Spirit (GOD-DESS) is the brainchild of Bret S. Beall, MS, Ph.D. candidate. The site highlights Bret’s business, which offers a variety of consulting, writing, speaking, and hands-on services for individuals, organizations, and companies.

You may have seen the listing for GOD-DESS in The Monthly Aspectarian’s Lightworkers Directory. Like many Monthly Aspectarian advertisers, the GOD-DESS website offers much more than a sales pitch for services. GOD-DESS, the company, provides individuals with the tools to lead better, more fulfilling lives with a minimal investment of time, money and effort. Through its “Archived Articles to Help You” section, GOD-DESS, the website, lets you sample some of those tools for free.

Bret’s philosophy is three-fold:

1. By streamlining basic activities, more time and energy will become available to satisfy one’s personal needs, desires and dreams.

2. By identifying (using scientific methodology) those aspects of the world around us that will impact us positively and negatively, we can make individual choices that will enhance our own lives each day.

3. By recognizing our connectedness to the entire world, we can help enhance the lives of others.

As you read this column, it will be February. Of course, the traditional time for making resolutions in right after the New Year in January. But as any reader of The Monthly Aspectarian knows, the date for beginning your particular new year happens whenever you decide it should. Therefore, when I visited the “Archived Articles to Help You” section and found these New Year’s Resolution suggestions, I thought they were appropriate for using whenever we make life-changing resolutions. They also provide an example of the free help you can receive at websites like this. The suggestions are excerpted from the article “Resolving Resolutions” that appeared in Bret’s column “Sensational Living.”

“Let’s begin with an assumption: every single resolution made at the new year is about living a better life. It’s about improving an existing life, and it’s about motivation to move one’s life in a new direction. These are all noble goals. So let keep these goals, and approach them slightly differently.

“The Number One change I would encourage you to make in terms of resolving to live a better life is to celebrate every single success, no matter how small. Celebrate first the decision to make a change. Then, for every tiny bit of progress, congratulate and celebrate your success. While long-range, specific goals have some benefit, too often people focus on the end result and not the path to achieving that result.

“The Number Two change I would like people to resolve to make when they make resolutions is to remember that life is gray. You don’t have to think in terms of absolutes; think in terms of gradients. Think comparatively: eat MORE healthily, or smoke LESS, or exercise MORE, or drink LESS alcohol, and so on. You don’t have to STOP drinking or smoking, just reduce. You don’t have to reach your ideal weight overnight, just move toward it. You don’t have to become a marathon runner, just increase your exercise.

“The Number Three change everyone should make is to stop trying to be perfect. You are a human being. By definition, you are not perfect. To think you can be perfect is the epitome of arrogance (and trust me, I’m a recovering perfectionist! I’m not proud of some of my perfectionist behavior … it wasn’t very pretty). Just try to be BETTER today than you were yesterday. Just keep trying to improve, and you can’t go wrong. You don’t have to be THE best, just be YOUR best.

“For Number Four, I would encourage people to focus on positive changes in their lives; so many resolutions are about stopping behaviors that we neglect to replace negative actions with positive actions. By focusing on positive changes, sometimes the negative behaviors just cease. It’s really surprising how this works. And even if they don’t cease, stopping negative behaviors can have a secondary role to full-fledged embracing of positive behaviors.

“Finally, Number Five is about extending your focus to others. Numbers One to Four are about directly improving yourself. Number Five involves resolving to help others more, to serve others more, to think more about how your behaviors and deeds impact others. It revolves around developing empathy, and then acting on that empathy. Much of this is encapsulated by the concept of “random acts of kindness.” Try it; you’ll like it.”

Hmmm … Come to think of it, another thing I like about this resolution method is that it focuses on loving yourself — and extending that love to others. And you know how many columns I’ve written about that! But I’m not the only one who likes Bret’s message. Another section of the site is “Testimonials.” Let me share a couple of those.

“I am continually amazed at how much a person can enrich their life by utilizing the teachings and theories of GOD-DESS. Bret is a master on how to eat well, travel far, and minimize the insanities of daily life — all on a shoestring budget.” —Kari Dabrowski, Glen Ellyn, IL

“Maintaining balance in your life ... a catchy buzz phrase these days. Exposure to Bret and GOD-DESS has helped me keep things balanced. I have found Bret’s outlook on life, food and design to be extremely enjoyable and useful to me. It’s probably over-simplification, but GOD-DESS has helped me slow down and ‘smell the roses’.” —Jack Thompson, Chicago, IL

This website is definitely worth a visit — and a bookmark.

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Mary Montgomery-Clifford is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises ("Freelancing with Finesse!"), specializes in public relations, events, promotions, writing project and web authoring, development and publicity. Ms. Montgomery-Clifford has a Master's Degree in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in June 2002 and is working on a Ph.D. with a focus on the new scholarship of Unlimited Love and the Other Regarding Virtues in the Fall of 2002. She is also in the process of completing the Morris Pratt Institute Course on Modern Spiritualism. Contact her via e-mail at Monty764@aol.com, by phone at 773-235-8821 or at her web site at www.montymedia.com.

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