Giving Thanks - Lessons from Camping in November

In the spirit of Thanksgiving...

I always thought that at least once in everyone's life, you should go camping in a tent on a cold November weekend, where the temperature at night is about 35F, preferably with a steady rain.   I can remember doing that when I was an adult leader for our local Boy Scout troop. 

Why do I think everyone should do this at least once?  You view things a little differently afterwards.  The first time I did it, I remember getting up in the evening a few days later at home, walking into a heated bathroom with indoor pluming, and realizing "Wow, this is really nice!"  You start appreciating, I mean really appreciating some of the things you took for granted before.

Amusing Rules for a Better Diet

Eating a perfectly balanced and exceptionally healthy diet can be hard, but some friends and I came up with this list of simple but amusing rules that, if followed, will dramatically improve your diet.

1. Don't eat anything you've seen advertised on TV
2. Forge the outside isles of supermarkets, don't venture into the middle of the store.
3. If it has an ingredients list, put it back
4. If it has a cartoon or a prize it is not food, it's entertainment. Put it back.
5. Avoid eating anything that leaves an orange stain on your fingers, it's not food.
6. Eat lotsa different colorful plants.
7. When choosing food colors, minimize the amount of brown food (exceptions to this include nuts and extra dark organic chocolate).

Other rules?

Manopause - A Definition

Manopause - The male counterpart to menopause:

A mental condition typically found in men in their mid to late 50's brought on by the realization that old age is just around the corner. Symptoms include: frequent reminiscing about the “good ol’ days”, cranky judgmental attitude and a closed minded approach to anything new. Usually punctuated by the chronic need to play a lot golf and vote republican. (copied from www.urbandictionary.com)

Fortunately I'm not affected - yet. Feel free to do an intervention if any symptoms start to appear though.

Moving and the Spirit of the 100 Thing Challenge

So we’re moving to Austin Texas. A new job with AMD is taking me there, along with my family. I feel very fortunate to have the job, especially since they are paying for my relocation. We’re now in the middle of going through everything in our home of 27 years, deciding what to take with us on the move, what to give away, and what to throw out. We’re constantly amazed at what we decided to save over the years and view this as an amazing opportunity to significantly declutter and simplify our lives.

I’ve always been fascinated by the “100 Thing Challenge”  promote by Dave Bruno – reducing your personal possessions to 100 items. It occurred to me that this would be a great opportunity to actually give that a try since I'm going through all my possessions and deciding what to keep and take with me anyway. What a great way to make a break with the past and start a new approach to living.

After giving it some thought, I began to question what I would really gain from strictly following this challenge. Instead, I decided it would be better to focus on the spirit of the challenge and significantly reduce my clutter in order to become less focused on, and bound by, a large collection of possessions. I decided to adopt a "filter" that would help me decide what to keep and what to get rid of as I went through things.

The first pass filter I chose is fairly simple: If something doesn't make me a better person or help me achieve my goals, then get rid of it. You can't be too strict about this, so objects headed on the way out from the first filter get a 2nd chance: if they make my life easier, or bring joy into my life on a regular basis (preferably at least weekly), then they could stay.

I've been making some occasional exceptions to these rules, but I find that they do a great job of helping me make decisions to get rid of all sorts of old stuff that would otherwise be difficult to decide on. After you build up some momentum, these acts actually end up becoming rather cathartic and liberating. I'm beginning to think that it's healthy for people to undergo such purges on a regular basis now. I've been way overdue for one.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the day: "Here is the ultimate paradox of the Great Health Care Showdown: Congress will divide along partisan lines to pass a Republican version of health care reform, and Republicans will vote against it." - E.J. Dionne

Sometimes you just have to laugh at American politics.

Life Transformation - Personal Growth

Continuing with the theme of establishing a set of new habits and goals during this new year period, the next topic up is personal growth.

• Seek out people who bring out the best in you, challenge you, and help you grow. Just as children are extremely influenced by the friends they make, so are you.
  
• Do something scary on a daily basis. Among other things, this implies overcoming any shyness and discomfort at talking to people you don’t know.
  
• Simple rules for success from Jane Goodall: “… really work hard, and take advantage of opportunities, and never give up…”
  
• Learn something new every day. Just as you exercise you body, you also need to exercise your brain. This becomes more important the older you get. Studies have shown that the most important brain exercise is to learn something completely new, not just incremental improvements in a topic you are already very familiar with.
  
• The more close relationships you have, the fuller you life and the better your health. Invest in friends, family, and relationships, new and old. Take time to really cherish them.
  

Two Wolves

Your attitude is your choice. Chosing optimism is an empowering political act.
A good friend of mine sent me an email with the following story.


TWO WOLVES

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

"One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

"The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Life Transformation – Spiritual Health

Continuing with the theme of establishing a set of new habits and goals during this new year period, the next topic up is spiritual health. Just as we need to avoid toxic junk food for the body, we should avoid toxic junk influences for our spirit.

• Avoid as much as possible exposure to commercial influences, including exposure to commercial TV and radio.
  
• Avoid exposure to things that promote anger, fear, resentment, envy, disrespect, and pessimism.
  
• Avoid exposure to things that promote objectionable values: violence as entertainment, glorification of conspicuous consumption, treating people as sex objects, etc…
  
• Avoid exposure to people promoting such toxic behaviors, and seek out energizing optimistic people.
  
• Become enthusiastically involved in positive causes that are bigger than yourself.
  

Life Transformation - Attitudes

Continuing with the theme of establishing a set of new habits and goals during this new year period, the next topic up is attitudes. Keeping in mind the old phrase “my habits define my life”, these are the habits of attitude that I want to help define my life.

• They key positive attitudes I will keep and promote at all times are gratitude and compassion. Before getting out of bed each morning I will establish a mindset based on these to attitudes.
  
• Negative attitudes I will eliminate from my life: anger, fear, envy. Decisions made when under the influence of these emotions tend to be very poor decisions.
  
• I will not complain about anything this year. I will either accept things as they are, or do something to change them. Sitting around complaining is an unacceptable reaction.
  
• I will not be impatient (a big personal problem for me). Being impatient is essentially complaining that the world is not moving fast enough to satisfy you, which is a silly and useless waste of your mental energy.
  
• I will always treat everyone with respect. This can prevent all sorts of problems.
  
• Being optimistic is a decision you make. It is one that empowers and energizes you and makes all sorts of positive change possible. I have decided to be optimistic.
  

Life Transformation - Progress Report

I did manage to get my email inbox down to zero on Jan 1st, and have kept it that way every evening since. I filed some items for future reference, and put those emails that still needed action in a “to do” folder, then archived the rest in a special folder in case I need to reference them in the future. So far, so good.

I also got rid of the vast majority of my pile of magazines. I cut out and saved some articles for future reference, then threw the rest out. It turns out that I had many more magazines squirreled away than I realized at first, and my goal of getting down to just three magazines being saved at any one time will be more difficult than I thought.

One problem that occurred to me comes from the old phase "my habits define my life". While the previous postings on developing better habits for organizing, diet, and staying healthy are good, I don't want them to define my life. Next up to post about is the set of habits that address attitudes, purpose, and spiritual related issues.