Welcome to the October Edition of The #MTL Monthly. In this month’s video, Sara and Kelci discuss Hops & Harvest, Craft Beer Week, a preview of Gait-to-Gate, and more! Click on the image above or here to watch.

Featured Community: Trilogy Lake Norman

Each month, we feature the #MTL Calendar’s spotlight community in a fun video. This month, learn about Trilogy Lake Norman! Click on the photo above or here to watch. Want to learn even more about Lake Norman? Click here!

Member Assistance Needed – Share Your Story

We are looking for Members from across the country who might be able to help us with the following #MTL Magazine stories currently in development:

1. Generational Recipes, Specifically Baking. Do you have a recipe that has been passed down to you that is a holiday or family favorite? We’d like to feature your item’s history along with a recipe for others to try.
2. Members Helping Members. Have you gone beyond the call of duty to lend a helping hand to a neighbor, or do you know someone who has? We want to feature some interesting stories of community togetherness in this year’s issue.
3. Brushes with Athletic Greatness. Do you have a storied athletic past (or present) you’d like to share? Whether you’ve been in the Olympics or competed professionally or been a part of a successful team, we’d love to highlight some of the amazing athletes in our communities.
4. Amazing Outdoor Adventures. Have you taken on the challenges of Mother Nature and triumphed? Whether it’s climbing mountains, swimming channels, biking high passes, or exploring the ocean floor, we want to hear your amazing story – past or present – of an amazing outdoor adventure.
5. Interesting Travel Experiences. Been somewhere cool in the past year? Or heading somewhere fun in the coming few months? We want to hear where you’ve been or where you’re going and share your experience with others so that they might be inspired to follow in your footsteps. Beautiful photos a strong preference for this story, which we hope will feature a collection of Member-taken photography.

If any of the above sound like you, we’ll just need an hour or so of your time and any photos you might have to help tell the story. If you’re interested, send us a note here.

Craft Beer Week is Coming October 17th – 23rd

Mark your calendars for a week full of beer activities from October 17th – 23rd for Trilogy’s Craft Beer Week! Gather your friends and family, and get ready for a week of always having an excuse to be enjoying a cold one. We’ve got beer tastings, beer specials, beer inspired culinary demos – just to mention a few! Be sure you tap in to your community’s events on MTL.

Exploring Trilogy’s Fifth Pillar of Wellness: Social Connection

With Dr. Roger Landry

We are better together. Despite peoples’ tendency to be annoying at times, despite the fact that we may have been hurt in the past, despite the grief we feel when we lose a loved one… we need connection to others. We need others for quality of life, to grow, to soothe us in scary times, and yes, to be healthy.

We are social creatures and have been since our ancestors first walked the earth. Had they not banded together and provided mutual support, humans would not have survived, and you and I would not be here today. Over eons of time, this requirement has been firmly entrenched into our DNA, and although how we live has dramatically changed since our ancestors lived, we are still wired to connect with others, including pets.

Yes, we need our alone time, probably more today than ever, but at our core, it is social connection that rules if we are to be healthy and fulfilled. The research on this is extremely compelling. Multiple long-term studies have confirmed that without substantive social connection, we are two-to-five times more likely to experience heart disease, cancer, dementia, and, of course, depression. Likewise, solid connection to at least a few others, is associated with remarkably less risk for, again, heart disease, cancer, and dementia. Lacking social connection equals the health risk associated with smoking a half-pack of cigarettes per day.

A World of Loneliness

The Masai have a saying: “We are not human unless we are with other humans.” Yet in today’s societies, loneliness has become a scourge, especially as we age. Britain, Canada, and Ireland have responded by appointing Ministers of Loneliness to deal with this threat to health, both physical and mental, as well as to quality of life.

As residents of Trilogy, you have chosen to live where the opportunities to maintain and grow social connection are abundant. However, opportunity doesn’t guarantee connection. Relationships of any kind require deliberate attention and cultivation in order to sprout, stay meaningful, and grow. And this is where we often find ourselves wanting. In a society where division is rampant, where, because many of us are living lives that do not provide the lifestyle needs we have been discussing all this year, we are more often contentious than welcoming, and suspicious rather than accepting. The result is absence of those friendships which sustain us through life’s slings and arrows.

Staying Connected

In May’s presentation on Emotional Confidence (click here to watch), we addressed some critical elements of forming and keeping meaningful relationships. Here are some of those tips along with some others:

Tips to Ensure Lifelong Social Connection

1. Nurture current relationships. Social connections, especially those made relatively recently, require “touches” both literally and figuratively. Although physically being present with friends and family is best, phone calls, texts, emails and even letters can provide the nutrients for continued growth of these relationships.  Make a list of people you value and track the touches you share with them.
2. Reconnect with people who’ve dropped out of your life. Technology now enables us to be able to find people who we lost along our life’s way. Seeking out those who were particularly important in your life can be a very pleasurable experience, if only for the memories it brings. Most often, these former friends are thrilled to reconnect.
3. Be open to new friendships. Oftentimes, as we age we feel we don’t have the energy to foster new friendships. However, that energy is the stuff of a healthy longevity lifestyle… a growth and open mindset that will be like a magnet to others. Make a point of engaging a potential new friend regularly.
4. Practice compassion. The Dalai Lama tells us “If you want others to be happy, have compassion. If you want to be happy, have compassion.” In a world filled with division and vitriol, compassion is a balm which beckons others to us.
5. Forgive. The person who benefits most from forgiveness is the forgiver, for no longer must they carry the burden of anger, disappointment, and isolation. Nelson Mandela was able to forgive those who imprisoned him for over 25 years, and it ultimately led to the end of apartheid in South Africa.
6. Give up the need to be right. You will become a rock star of social connection if you can practice this even just part of the time. This is about allowing the other person to have an opinion contrary to yours. If you reflect, you will most likely realize you probably have never changed anyone’s opinion on anything. Why sacrifice the powerful benefits of social connection because the other person differs from you? Isn’t variety the spice of life? Why not add some spice to yours?

Fill your life with people… and pets. An African proverb says it all: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Don’t miss Dr. Landry’s next presentation on Saturday, November 12th as he dives deeper into the topic of Social Connection. Click here for more information and to register.

Dr. Amy’s Wellness Journal

The Ugly Truth – Fragrances

“Many of us associate ‘clean’ with particular smells. We have fragrances in our soaps, lotions, and beauty products that make us smell a certain way; we clean our houses with ‘freshscent’ cleaners, and wash and dry our clothes with fragrances we have come to associate with ‘clean’ laundry.

Fragrances are ubiquitous, and they are almost always composed of multiple chemicals including disease-causing phthalates. It’s not an exaggeration to report these pleasant smells have quickly become, along with plastics, one of our biggest daily exposures to neurotoxins and carcinogens.”

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.