Written by Denise Deby.

Given our need for healthy food, it’s surprising that food issues are often not on the agenda.

That’s a problem, especially because many people don’t have healthy and sustainable food:

• Here in Ottawa, eight per cent of people live in households that are food insecure—meaning unable to afford or access a sufficient, healthy diet. For low income residents, it’s worse: a third of households don’t get enough to eat.
• Across Canada, four million Canadians are food insecure. That includes 1.15 million kids. Among Inuit, First Nations and Métis people and in the North, food insecurity is five or six times higher.
• Food prices have been rising faster than incomes. Food bank use has increased by 25 per cent since 2008. Every month, around 850,000 Canadians—including working people, people on fixed incomes and children—need food banks in order to make ends meet.
• More than half…

There are two types of attitude in every workplace, positive and negative attitudes. Negative attitudes can result from a series of factors including the overall workplace environment, the attitude of superiors and the individual themselves. Positive attitudes can result from the exactly the same situational and personal factors. What is the difference? The difference is in the thinking.

People with a negative attitude may have a lot of reasons to be less than positive in their workplace but the primary reason for their negativity is actually their thinking. Scientists and researchers who have studied this phenomenon have come up with a long list of thinking patterns that they call distorted thinking styles. Have a look at the list and see if you can recognize yourself or others in your workplace.

• Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation.
• Polarized Thinking:…

Miss Geneva thought I deserved a break this weekend.

Miss Geneva says “Rub my belly, human”

In-between catching up on addressing Christmas card envelopes and writing short, meaningful messages, I turned my attention to a different task.

I have been a volunteer with a professional conference the past two years. Due to my introverted tendencies, I prefer to use my talents in organizing things and making sense out of jumbled numbers.  I don’t like being in the middle of all the action, especially if it’s loud and chaotic.

Ironically, I volunteered to organize the post-conference social event – for the second year in a row.  That went very well with plenty of finger food, liquid refreshments and conversation opportunities.

Over the next few weeks, in-between demands from festivities and social events,  I will be in a happy place of working with Excel, transposing ranking numbers and nearly illegible handwriting from dozens more evaluation forms.

My cats provide me…

This time of year – a time of peace and goodwill – can be one of the most stressful for us, particularly when it comes to buying presents. We often feel an enormous amount of pressure to get it all ‘right’.  To help ease some of the strain, I’ve come up with a few suggestions.

How do I decide?

Generally we give presents because it feels nice to make others happy, right? Therefore the key thing is to give our purchases some thought. Even a little goes a long way.

“Sure”, I hear you say, “but where do I start?”

Start by making a short list of some of the things you know about the recipient – even as few as five things will give you ideas (and if you don’t know five things about them, do you really need to give them a present?). For instance, a list…