This is a follow-up to Episode 30, which is titled "Less Stress, More Happiness." In that episode, I talked about a simple daily practice that I learned from a friend. Entailing only a breath in and a breath out followed by a short, declarative statement, it's incredibly useful in lifting one's focus from stressful thoughts to higher, happier ones.

I have found, though, that sometimes I want to embellish what is already a powerful statement, so that's what this episode is all about.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.

This short essay is the second in an as-yet-undetermined number of episodes in this podcast's "What if ..." series. The first episode also launched Everyday Creation, which debuted in early February 2024. However, I rewrote and re-recorded that episode so many times — I truly lost count — that it took me nine months, off and on, to get it to the point where I was ready to move on to the second in the series .

I say all this to explain why the first "What if ..." is Episode 1 and this one is Episode 68. Quite a spread between the two, isn't there?

In the interim, I did a couple of related essays, though they're titled differently. If you want to check them out too, they're Episodes 55 and 57: "Smile on a Summer's Day" and "Picturing a Kinder, Gentler World," respectively.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.

This is the first of four excerpts from a longer interview with family medicine physician Adeola Fakolade, MD. In this short episode, Adeola traces her path from Nigeria to the U.S.

The full interview with Adeola is episode 62, and the other excerpts are episodes 65, 66 and 67.

Hope you enjoy listening to this accomplished professional who's good-humored, personable and a delightful teller of her stories.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.

This is the fourth excerpt from a longer interview with family medicine physician Adeola Fakolade, MD. In this episode, Adeola talks about why having access to healthcare is so important and how we, as patients, can maximize the time we have with our doctors.

The full interview with Adeola is episode 62, and the other excerpts are episodes 64, 65 and 66.

Hope you enjoy listening to this accomplished professional who's good-humored, personable and a delightful teller of her stories.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.

This is the third excerpt from a longer interview with family medicine physician Adeola Fakolade, MD. In this episode, Adeola talks about lifestyle medicine and disease prevention.

The full interview with Adeola is episode 62, and the other excerpts are episodes 64, 65 and 67.

Hope you enjoy listening to this accomplished professional who's good-humored, personable and a delightful teller of her stories.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.

This is the second excerpt from a longer interview with family medicine physician Adeola Fakolade, MD. In this short episode, Adeola talks about having a positive outlook on life and also discusses the WHO (World Health Organization) definition of good health, which is about thriving.

The full interview with Adeola is episode 62, and the other excerpts are episodes 64, 66 and 67.

Hope you enjoy listening to this accomplished professional who's good-humored, personable and a delightful teller of her stories.

On a related note: If you like what Adeola says about the importance of having a good relationship with oneself, you may want to check out an earlier episode I did with Dr. Darcy Lord. That episode is about self-love, a concept that may sound selfish but is anything but. Darcy's full interview is available as are short excerpts.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.

I'm not a pessimist by nature. However, the 2016 election kind of threw me. I started thinking about it Sunday night, after reading a Substack post by Greg Olear about Leonard Cohen's song, "Hallelujah." In Olear's post, there's a link to Kate McKinnon singing part of "Hallelujah" for SNL's cold opening on Nov. 12, 2016.

Her performance touched me deeply and prompted me to share this brief story eight years later, not that I expected to experience the same outcome in 2024 but to express the feelings that so many of us had back then. So here it is, a simple story and the profound lessons learned since.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.

Dr. Adeola Fakolade is an accomplished professional and a delightful person to talk with and get to know. She's a family medicine and public health and general preventive medicine physician who's passionate about patient access to high-quality healthcare and what that means for people in terms of their ability to thrive.

To that last point, Adeola talks about the World Health Organization's definition of good health. WHO, she says, defines it as much more than the absence of disease. In this episode, she expands on that subject and talks about a range of topics that include the small pleasures of a long commute and ways to maximize your healthcare appointments.

Adeola also traces her own path from medical school in Nigeria to Ashtabula, Ohio, which is in Ohio's northeastern-most county. It's considered a rural area with many under-served residents, meaning they don't have adequate access to healthcare. Adeola is working to change that, one patient at a time.

This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to Everyday Creation, available on YouTube and in podcast directories including Apple, Audible, iHeart and Spotify.