Words to Live By!

Too often we focus on what’s wrong with people, not what’s right. Our absence of heroic, virtuous individuals is a telltale sign of a culture that values perversity rather than morality. The reality shows featuring dysfunctional individuals is fast becoming the entertainment of choice.

What saddens me is that we are not acknowledging people who have been tested beyond anything most of us can imagine. I’ll never forget one man in particular who had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Two aids by his side, he sat in his wheelchair and smiled at me throughout my presentation. Afterwards his wife, who helped interpret for him, told me how happy he was to have attended my lecture and how blessed he felt to have his wife and others help him in his hour of need. Driving home, I had flashbacks of incidents in my life where I turned a hangnail or a traffic jam into a catastrophe. I know I’m not the only one that does this; otherwise, I wouldn’t be in business. What meeting this man taught me was that even in the most dire circumstances we can find “the bless in the mess”. It sounds rather esoteric, but there are many incidents that can be reframe into something that becomes easier to tolerate by making small mind shifts.

Our perceptions create our realty, and some of us seem to want to make a situation much worse than it is, because we’re hooked on drama. Consider the simple act of waiting in a line. It can be frustrating, but it really isn’t a death sentence. According to a study done at MIT, you’re going to spend three years of your life waiting in lines. Why make it feel like prison? You might want to consider the fact that while you’re waiting you are literally at rest. Nothing to do and no one around to make demands on you. Of course that means you have to stay off your cell phone. No one really needs to know you’re in line. They need a break to.

Life will consistently challenge you in many different ways. If you develop skills to handle the inevitable glitches, you will gain tremendous resiliency. The title of author Richard Carlson’s book says it best, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all small stuff” Words to live by!

Fatter and Fatter

How many times have you tried to lose weight and failed?
The average person who struggles with weight has been on many different programs and regained the weight in less than a year. Most of us are experts in finding excuses as to why we couldn’t maintain our losses. Pregnancies, children, relatives, spouses, jobs, menopause, age, you name it and it’s been used as away to fall off the diet wagon. Most of the time it’s because the diet we choose is not sustainable.

Goat milk for breakfast, yak eggs for lunch, and buffalo tartare are not very appetizing after a week or two. Of course, I’m being ridiculous, but if you check out most of the so-called plans configured to get you to lose the five pounds a week they promise, they’re usually predicated on boring regimens that end up driving you to eat five hot fudge sundaes at a sitting. The fact that the general population is getting fatter and fatter has created quite a conundrum for the medical community. Researchers in the field of weight loss are furtively seeking a solution.

Every week we are given the results of some study that speaks to the possibility of something that might be precipitating the increases in our waistlines. A virus has been implicated. I don’t know which one, but it certainly adds to my bag of excuses. I can recall a particular cold I got ten years ago that might be the culprit for some of my weight gain. Hanging out with people who are overweight seems to have some legs, albeit heavy ones. That could work for me, only my pals vary in size, so I guess I’ll have to have them weighed so I can spend more time with the heaviest one. I just won’t be able to tell her why.

Having a mate that likes to eat everything in sight is another problem, and so is how much stress you have. If you have a lot of stress and your partner overeat, you’ve won the “excuse” lotto. If the afore-mentioned doesn’t work for you, not to worry, the latest finding is that scientists have discovered “obesogens” found in plastic bottles, high fructose sugar, pizza boxes, vinyl flooring and shower curtains. So there you have it. If people are tired of your excuses, just tell them that you’ll soon be as slim as a knife because you’re not taking a shower anymore, eat pizza or walk on your kitchen floor.