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Department stores, perfume distributors, florists and Hallmark revel during the week prior to Mother's Day. Gifts are great . . . especially gold and shiny ones, but, why not try something new and different this year, a special gift that costs nothing and yet might give more satisfaction than anything material?
 After lunch is over and the dishes are done, why not ask Mom to go for a walk with you? Just a simple walk in the park or along the beach or in any setting of your choice for the purpose of a Mothers's Day heart to heart--on the topic of living the "good life," through the multiple pathways of healthy lifestyles.
Agree to focus the conversation on the topic of fitness and how important it, along with sound diet and so many other choices we
all make on a daily basis, are to the quality of the years we have in this life.
As we age, we come to realize from the advice of others and/or our own experience that daily exercise helps prevent disease, increase energy levels, improve flexibility, support physical functions and provide other benefits too numerous to list on a single page!
Talk about the basics during your Mother's Day walk. Talk about how fitness includes aerobic training and strength training, that loss of muscle strength is a controllable factor that otherwise will interfere with an independent lifestyle in later years and that strength training will reduce the risks of osteoarthritis, obesity and undernutrition.
Here are ten wellness conversational suggestions to support your wellness walk. The idea is to create a sense of enthusiasm for fitness and a wellness lifestyle. If Mom can be helped to understand and act in accord with these suggestions, you will have dramatically advanced her prospects to succeed at wellness. What a memorable Mother's Day this will be.
- Advice can come from many sources, but ultimately we all must make the unique decisions for designing and maintaining quality for health, leisure and wellness choices.
- It is very difficult to be well and focused on excellence in lifestyle choices if you can't express your talents and passions in some manner on a daily basis.
- Coming to terms with the fact that change is inevitable and happening at a faster pace than ever before will enable a person to deal more effectively with its manifestations in retirement.
- Our lifestyle choices, including our attitudes/beliefs/emotional responses and actions, will have a far greater impact on our health, work and wellness performance than any and all doctors who do or could serve us, the economy, the environment, our income level, our age, our retirement plan or our luck.
- Wellness is too important to be pursued grimly. Whatever our choices, we must insure that having fun.
- Modern medicine's a wonderful thing but there are two problems: people expect too much of it and too little of themselves.
- Balance is a good thing and a worthy goal but there are times when we all have to put it aside to pursue a passion over time, a heroic quest or other short-term goal that takes too much time and energy to permit the maintenance of balance. Be flexible.
- It's better to take up healthy practices than to give up unhealthy habits, at least initially when trying to enhance the quality of our lifestyle. For example, we are better advised to take up a satisfying activity like vigorous walking before attempt to quit smoking.
- Lifestyle quality is seldom achieved by accident--we have to make a choice to live and work this way.
- It's never too late to start a wellness lifestyle. Even if 100. Or older.
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