BalAnce Blog – BalAnce Well-Being Centre Inc.

SPOTLIGHT – Karly Fiddes by Tom Kernaghan

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When you first meet Karly Fiddes you feel as though you went to high school with her, worked together on a fundraising project, or met at summer camp. Okay, you may say fostering familiarity is a core skill of any successful radio host, but it’s more than that. Karly’s uncommon mix of verve, vulnerability, and verbal vivacity can connect and wake you up faster than a large cup of extra dark roast. Yet within her strong voice whispers a deeper quality that makes the morning easier: a kind and unpretentious heart that feels the strain along with us … and then magically makes it fun.

That’s certainly the feeling I had when I first met Karly and during the two times I shared the stage with her — first as one of the storytellers at BWB’s Storytelling Tuesday five years ago, and then as a one-time co-host of that same event, a role she performed with electric energy for a couple of years. Not surprisingly, Karly was way better at speaking off the cuff to a crowd than I was. She is a pro, after all. But I digress.

As for Karly’s quips and digressions, they are hilarious. Those who have met her or who have listened to B Mack and Karly on Virgin Radio will already know this. Together they create a sonic space popping with possibility. And what makes Karly so engaging is her saucy candour, her ability to laugh at herself, and her willingness to share her foibles and struggles. What makes her inspiring is how she has turned her challenges into advantages and landed her dream job.

Aren’t you tired of waiting for work to get better? By Barri Harris

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Belittlement and beratement are not forms of motivation

When do we hit the tipping point that makes toxic workplaces obsolete?

For a while, it has felt like toxic cultures and toxic leadership would never improve. Until now. In the last few years, I’ve been
starting to feel a shift. People all over the globe are saying, “I won’t work like this anymore”. “I deserve better.” Workers everywhere
are taking positive action for better work and workplace environments.

When you fall sick, you are told that getting better takes time, but you have a role to play in your healing. You can’t just sit around
and wait to heal; sometimes, you need to take positive action to support your healing and hasten your recovery.

So, being miserable is going out of style by Tara Pilling

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Healing is a space that more people are entering because they are tired of carrying the weight of the past and are ready to unbind old conditioning that places limits on their happiness.  

People all over the world are actively finding ways to heal themselves in much greater numbers than in past generations.

  The work of letting go does not feel as mysterious as it used to, because therapists and meditation techniques can now clearly walk you through the process.  

We have much further to go in regard to accessibility, but it is undeniable that healing tools are now available to greater numbers of people.  

Why Do I Feel Like Crap? By Courtney Kafka

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As a Bowen Therapist I hear this a lot. Why do I feel like crap? Why am I in such pain? Why do I hurt so much
I can’t give you a definitive answer, but I can point you in the right direction.

There are several reasons for you feeling like crap.

Your nervous system is overwhelmed with stress! We are tied to our phones, computers, the radio, the news, work and life. If you aren’t turning these stimulus off and finding a calming, grounding activity to do the stress will just cause the same issues.
You don’t really sleep, and when you do its not very restful.
Your gut health isn’t very good which means you crave sugar and carbs, which in turn makes you feel worse.
Your inflamed which means puffiness, bloat and feeling like your clothes are too tight.
You have headaches everyday, feel like yuck and you just can’t seem to really breath. When you do try to breath deeply, things feel sticky. And why can’t you get rid of that darn cough?

Why Exercise can Slow Aging? by John Schlapbach

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Commitment to exercise requires an attitude, and behavioral change. Only then will it replace poor lifestyle habits.You may have good intentions, and then you relapse due to other factors in your life According to psychologist Shelly E Taylor, “changing a health habit isn’t easy, and may occur in stages.” Planning an exercise program and keeping a journal will help your motivation to continue. Group participation adds a social element to your chosen activity. Some people need more social support than others.

Exercise is the easy part, the habit is not. Sticking to a routine must become a new habit. Try replacing a bad habit with exercise. Some people have done it with smoking.

SPOTLIGHT – Matt Stewart by Tom Kernaghan

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“It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being one percent better than yesterday.”

When Matt Stewart delivers this line in a recent LinkedIn video promoting careers at the Staples Studio, where he is the Community Manager, I am reminded of the warm and encouraging impression of the man when I first saw him as a co-host for Balance Well-Being’s Storytelling Tuesday a few years ago.

Matt, an executive coach with over twenty years of experience, exudes acceptance, inclusiveness, and positivity. His sense of hope and compassion is a salve in these stressful days of division and our demands for perfection. But that doesn’t mean he suffers excuses or bad behaviour. While he can parry ignorance and small-mindedness with class and poise, he is equally capable of blunt and salty language, as he boldly demonstrates in another video: “The right shit, for the right why, for the biggest impact.” And he’s not afraid to employ a well-placed F-bomb, too. After all, activating potential is not for lightweights, and he activates a lot.

Matt — a.k.a. “Community Cultivator,” “Connectorpreneur,” “Den Mother,” and “The Bearded Leader”— has lived all over the world and advised senior leaders across North America, in the worlds of finance, film, healthcare, and major sporting events such as the Olympics, Paralympics, and the Pan Am Games. He is also a TEDx speaker who has also shouldered profound personal battles, living with leukemia and the long-term effects of Covid-19, while actively supporting many communities, including the LGBTQ community, of which he is a member. I also call him an inspiring survivor.

9 Questions to Ask Before Hiring A Home Cleaning Service by Daleen Qazilbash

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For most people, the questions that immediately come to mind are:

What are standard house cleaning rates?
Is it safe to have cleaners in my home?
What do residential house cleaners do?

These are excellent questions, and it is advisable to know the answers before hiring any residential cleaning service. Yet people often overlook the other important questions. You don’t want any surprises! What if your pets are suddenly getting sick from exposure to toxic cleaning products? What if a new cleaner shows up and you don’t have the time to go over everything? Here are nine questions that may help you avoid some common pitfalls when hiring your cleaning company.

Channeling Saborra By Bonita Kay Summers

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I’ve always been a channeler, even before I knew what it was.

As a child, I would bring my mom a coffee in the morning, sit on her bed, and we would chat. Gradually, the conversation became more advanced, involving insights my young mind could not have generated. They were coming through me.

It was a strange experience. It was as though I was sitting next to me, hearing words coming from my mouth, and thinking, “I didn’t know that.” Afterward, I’d feel as though I’d had electricity running through my spine, such was the energy of the channeling experience.

In his book, “Evolution’s End”, Joseph Chilton Pearce talks about an incident in which his five-year-old came into his room, delivered a dissertation on everything he needed to know for his lecture that day, and left. Later on, when he brought this up with his son, the child had no memory of the experience. Children are natural channels, receiving from the world around them without interference. There were times I would receive snatches of wisdom from my children, for example, who might spontaneously make up a song that contained answers I needed in that moment.

Mastering the voice in your head by Dale Choquette

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What little voice? I don’t have one. Yes you do. We all do. It’s the chatter that goes on in your brain. Some call it monkey mind.
Whatever your little voice says sounds perfectly. That’s the problem. You tend to listen to it too much because it does sound logical and you end up believing it.
Your little voice is the sum of all the experiences and advice you’ve had in your life and really haven’t been thinking about.
It’s your reptilian brain or amygdala and it’s 400 million years old. It’s that part of your brain that talks to you and boy it does a lot of talking. Sadly we tend to believe what it says is true. It comes up with it gets triggered by something.
Your little voice is mine, it’s yours, your parents, teachers, friends, and spouse. All people with good intentions trying to protect you by telling you what to do.
There is a little voice inside of you that REALLY knows what to do and knows what’s best for you. Your spirit is your ultimate little voice that is truly you. It says things like this is what you’re meant to do. You’re good. Keep going. We only hear it once in a while. Not often enough.
We all have the ability to recognize that little voice and use it to accomplish things. So often that little voice sabotages us. We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.
Your little voice is there for a reason. It can keep us from doing stupid things like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. It kept us safe as kids, stopping us from stepping out into traffic so we don’t want to eliminate it, we want to manage it.
We become pre-programmed with our little voice. For instance, my grade 7 teacher told me I wasn’t good at math. So every time I had to calculate something my little voice said oh, you can’t do that and I’d pull out a calculator. When I had to take a stats course for my Purchasing certification, my little voice said: “How am I going to pass this course?” So our experiences can pre-program us with certain automatic responses, but we can unlearn that.

SPOTLIGHT – Tom Kernaghan by Shawna McCrea

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Tom, I first met you on May 10, 2016, at one of our first BalAnce Storytelling Tuesdays. You had recently made the big move here from Toronto, and it was great to hear you were happy to be in Kelowna. And I remember you were so inspired by Storytelling that you wrote a beautiful blog post about your experience. I was blown away by what an amazing writer you are. You joined the BalAnce Well-Being team as our Spotlight writer in 2017 and since then have created the most wonderful BalAnce Well-Being member profiles. Also, you have been to most of the Storytelling Tuesdays.

I’m very thankful to count you as a friend.

What inspired you to come to the Okanagan, and how has your life evolved?

First of all, the friendship feeling is mutual, Shawna. Thank you for your kind words, that warm welcome to the BalAnce community, and this Spotlight!

I had an epiphany during a trip here in June of 2015. I was visiting dear Toronto friends of mine who had moved here two years prior. In the span of a few days we hiked, mountain biked, floated down a river, jumped into the lake from the Wibit floating obstacle course, watched open mic comedy, and ate great food! Also, it didn’t hurt that every day was sunny, hot, and dry. I was sold on those things alone!