Welcome to the June Edition of The#MTL Monthly. In this month’s video, Sara and Kelci discuss Trilogy Bourbon Week, Father’s Day, and more! Click on the image above or here to watch.
Featured Club: Kiva and Mita Clubs in Trilogy at Vistancia
Each month, we feature the #MTL Calendar’s spotlight community in a fun video. This month, learn about Trilogy at Vistancia’s Kiva and Mita Clubs! Click on the photo above or here to watch. Want to learn even more about Vistancia? Click here!
Trilogy Bourbon Week is Coming | June 12 – 18
Get ready for the ultimate bourbon experience! Trilogy Bourbon Week is back and it’s better than ever! From June 12th to Father’s Day on June 18th, discover the best ways to drink, learn, and have fun with bourbon.
Explore the rich flavors of bourbon through immersive tastings and gain knowledge from engaging educational sessions. Watch as expert mixologists demonstrate the art of crafting tantalizing bourbon cocktails. Indulge in unforgettable pairing dinners where delectable dishes meet perfectly complementing bourbons.
For all the details on your community’s Trilogy Bourbon Week events, check MTL. Join us in raising a glass to Trilogy Bourbon Week and cheers to an unforgettable week of bourbon adventures!
Buy One, Get One Free Bourbon/Whiskey Drinkware in the #MTL Shop
Sip in style with Trilogy-themed drinkware! In honor of Bourbon Week, buy one Trilogy Bourbon or Whiskey Glass in the #MTL Shop, and get one free through June 30th, 2023.
*Discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Offer valid on new orders only. Cannot be combined with other offers. No cash value.
Stress, Resilience, and Healthy Longevity with Dr. Roger Landry
As we continue with our 2023 theme, The How of Healthy Longevity, we’ve learned the important role of resilience: what it is, its complex nature, and how we can strengthen it. In this article, we’ll address the role of stress and the absolute requirement to manage it in order to bolster our resilience and thereby move toward a healthy longevity.
We’ve all heard or said things like: “I’m so stressed,” “Stress is good,” “Stress is bad,” “I’d be OK if I could get rid of this stress,” “The world is stressful, we can’t get away from it.”So, what if I told you that your stress is self-induced? I suspect you might feel anger or at least disbelief. Yes, it’s annoying to hear this, but also optimistic because if it’s self-induced, it can also be self-managed. And we must manage it. Seventy-five to ninety percent of medical visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related conditions. It is estimated that the cost of stress-related conditions is $300 billion per year!
Why do we have stress?
We have inherited our stress response from our ancestors. Without it, they would not have survived, and we would not be here talking about it today. It is called a fight or flight response and it is designed to save us in an emergency. So, for example, our ancestor Hector is out walking and meets a lion. He runs or he fights, and whichever he chooses, he will do it with enormously enhanced strength and speed, because all his physiology is geared to survive. This explains how people can lift cars off trapped people or hop out of the way of an oncoming car, or soldiers can do almost superhuman things. But this response is meant to be of short duration and designed for us to dosomething.
Why do we have so much stress today?
We do not live in the world of our ancestors. Today, our pace of life, spread of information, noise, time urgency, and potential threats are much more prevalent than for Hector. Our time-based, production-oriented culture is making us sick, and yes, killing us. Stress, in fact, erodes our resilience, hence the widespread stress-related diseases.
However, our higher-level brain is the other culprit. If a zebra is chased by a lion and survives, he is grazing shortly after, seemingly peaceful as ever. If we humans are attacked, most of us would carry that around with us, perhaps for the rest of lives, making us fearful and anxious – i.e., stressed.
The Blessings and Curse of our Magnificent Brain
With our higher-level brains, we can, in fact, produce a threat at any time. When we worry about our to-do list, our finances, our grandchildren, being late, or the world situation… all these things become situations that our bodies react to as if they were real and immediate threats to us. Our stress response becomes chronic and, because we usually cannot do anything about what we’re worried about, it begins to literally rot us from within. Our thoughts drive our emotions, which drive our physiology and our reactions to those emotions. The ancient Greek, Epictetus, had it right: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.”
The good news – the blessing of our superbrain – is that we have the ability to recognize this chronic stress in ourselves, and to override its otherwise automatic negative effects. This is why I said earlier that most of our stress is self-induced. Like Epictetus said, it is our thoughts of potentially stressful situations which cause our chronic stress. No lions, only thoughts of lions. How then, can we engage our superbrains to reduce, rather than create, stress?
The Magical Power of Presence
We have all heard that we should be more present, more mindful. In fact, those who are more mindful, such as those who regularly meditate, experience reduced blood pressure, inflammation, and heart disease, as well as less cognitive decline and a host of additional positive health effects. Meditation is an excellent way to become more present, more mindful, but it is not the only way. Anything that increases awareness without thought or judgement will work to reduce our stress levels and therefore increase our resilience.
Paying attention to what we are doing, however simple, is being mindful, more present, and will allow us to observe what’s happening in our minds and bodies. Just by recognizing what’s happening is enough to stop the runaway thought-emotion-reaction process. Here are some examples of mindfulness-enhancing practices:
Meditation
A Walk in Nature
Practicing a Skill (Art, Woodwork, Knitting)
Being with a Pet
Exercise
Music
Reading for Pleasure
Taking Regular Time-outs to Observe What’s Going on Within
Summing Up
Stressful situations abound in our world. How we respond to them determines whether they produce stress in us or are like water off a duck’s back. Engaging in regular mindfulness-inducing activities can help prevent the triggering of our stress response and enable us to halt the negative effects when it is triggered.
Eckhart Tolle, in his seminal work, The Power of Now tells us there are only three things to do when confronted with a stressful situation:
Fix the situation, or make a plan to fix it (doing something).
Walk away (it is not your problem to solve).
Accept it (why fight reality?).
Excellent advice indeed.
– Dr. Roger Landry
Did you miss the first event in Dr. Landry’s four-part series on resilience? Click here to view the recording, and be sure to join us for the second part on Saturday, August 19th.
Hit the Road with Explore 52!
Looking to get out and explore the area around your community this summer? Are you spending time with the grandkids and aren’t sure how to keep them occupied? Explore 52 can help be your guide!
Explore 52 is Trilogy’s distinct way of helping you “see the ways of the place through the eyes of a local.” Each community has at least 52 ideas (one for each week of the year!) that are within driving distance from your community. Explore 52 trips might include local attractions, parks, hidden gems, great restaurants, and more!
To check out your community’s Explore 52 Trips, head to MTL and click on More Fun Stuff then select “Explore 52,” or click here!
“After years of promoting hormone use for menopause and peri-menopause, often against the grain and amidst mixed messages from providers and publications, I’m so thrilled to see the tides turning and the message of safe hormone use becoming mainstream. We’ve seen now for more than a decade that hormone use for menopause (especially when done correctly) is safe for many — actually most — women.”
Click here to read the full article. You can read all of Dr. Amy’s Wellness Journals at any time on MTL by clicking on More Fun Stuff > Dr. Amy and then selecting the Wellness Journals tab.
