Ripples Reaching Out Hugs Reaching Back

Everybody needs a hug.  It changes your metabolism.  ~Leo Buscaglia

So I broke my fast yesterday to help out a co-worker.  She was down, feeling alone in her work, obviously frustrated personally and professionally.  I have been there.  In fact the previous two weeks she asked me if I wanted a hug. I accepted. I needed a hug.  Yesterday was my turn to offer her a hug.

This was not easy for me.  Touching someone at all, let alone an act as intimate as a hug means something. Especially when on a fast, so many people tell me it won't work.  They are all watching, waiting, judging. You know this. So you just want to be successful first, and then tell people why.  Sometimes it doesn't work that way.

I get teary whenever I see one of these videos, because I know how much it means to give and receive a hug.  I know many desperate lonely people need to know that someone cares enough to offer them. People offer a small piece of their time, and share a small intimacy telling someone else they matter.  Anyway where was I? Ah yes, the hugging. So she needed a hug, but more than that, she needed someone she could talk to professionally, and perhaps personally, so I offered to fill that role.  Heaven knows there is a massive lack of that kind of professional support at the organization I work. I never got it, and I know many qualified competent people left the organization because it isn't offered.  So I stood in that gap for her.  I love teaching people.  It energizes me.  So we exchanged cell numbers. I offered to assist in formal presentations she has to make.  In short being a mentor.

I had a choice to make. I could stand by and do nothing and let her resolve her problems, or I could step outside my comfort zone. I could risk touching a person of the opposite gender at a time when I know I am emotionally vulnerable.  I could mentor her professionally at a time when I am giving serious consideration to leaving the organization.  I could take her to lunch when I am on a juice fast to lose 100 pounds.  Everything has a price.

Everything has a price, but once we recognize that truth, the corollary becomes which question are we using as a follow up.  Sure everything has a price, but after that we have 2 questions we might ask ourselves. 1 question is the obvious what do we want in exchange for that price?, not a profane question by any means.  It is not however the best response to everything has a price in my opinion.

I have tried to stress the importance of who are you?, in earlier posts.  Only you know the answer, and if you don't know it, only you can discover it.  No one else can tell you the answer to who are you?

Now in the context of the dilemma I faced yesterday I will answer both corollary questions and show you what I mean.

What do you want?

Hug	Perhaps this is simple payback
Mentoring	Self Esteem Boost
Lunch	Again perhaps simple payback

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Who are you?

Hug	Caring, Compassionate person
Mentoring	Teacher
Lunch	Needs of another outweigh my need to be thin

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Now one set of those answers are life affirming.  And one set of those answers are self affirming. Neither set of answers is inherently bad, but one set is better.  When I respond to life's challenges with who I am, instead of what I want, I find the outcome is ... I don't know, just better.

I am not waiting on her to pay me back. It has a price, but when I say Everything has a price, I mean EVERYTHING.  You see if I focus on what I will get out of everything I become self focused, and ultimately self centered and selfish.  Sure I am healthier and fitter than before if I lose weight, but am I better?  I think the answer to that is no, if it also makes me self centered and selfish.

If I do not respond to her need because I fear not getting paid back, or gaining back weight I have lost, I deny who I am.  That causes me to focus on myself more than ever.  It has the effect as before of making me more selfish, and self centered, a greedy miser.  That is the price of not responding.

By responding to the price with who you are, you are not keeping score, in fact focusing on who you are releases you from keeping score.  You can trust the scorekeeper knows, and while it has a price, you simply focus on your role, and the larger game will work out.  You respond to a need based on who you are.  It affirms you without focusing on you.  Who you are is good enough, even if you do not reach all your goals.

Teaching is part of me, and I lose nothing by speaking into someone else's life with knowledge I gained. But instead of focusing on me, on what I can gain, I focus on someone else, I gain more in the exchange.  These are the ripples you can make.

Reaching out to others frees you from the tyranny of meeting your every need.  You are freed from selfishness and self centeredness, because you are your own worst critic.  Creating ripples in the ponds of our lives, sharing ourselves makes us richer because God, or if you prefer the universe, provides.

Because now instead of having no one to discuss your fasting, or other personal struggles, you have a co-worker you can reach out to, someone who is free to reach back.  You are more than yourself, by being yourself, by reaching out.  You are made more powerful, by giving yourself away, by sharing you become richer.  Ripples on a pond.  You throw in one stone, and the ripples will reach out in ways you didn't consider when you first threw the stone.

The beauty is you get what you need, by just being who you are. Without focusing on what you want, or what someone else can give you, being you is enough.  Being you can make the world you live in a better place.  Spread the Ripples, hug someone today. :)

Ripples
1 Cucumber
3 Tomatoes, (1 can)
1 Celery heart
3 Broccoli stalks
1 can of V8
Half a bag of carrots, (I prefer baby carrots)
Hot sauce to taste

Rainbows Are an Illusion

Continuing yesterday's theme of settling in. And the first post on mental preparation, today's post is about accepting and embracing the frustrations in our lives.Rainbows are an illusion. Double Rainbows, doubly so, (with apologies to Douglas Adams).

Whether it is the incessant needs of an addict who aggravates you and grates on your very last nerve, unexpected demands on our time or other resources, or a juicer that is giving you fits, all of these things can send you over the edge. 

Why? I mean normally these are minor inconveniences. Well the answer is your body is coping with more than it believes it can handle now. It has become soft, mentally, emotionally, and physically.  That is why I stay away from most people and frustrations during the first few days of a fast. I don't need the additional stressors.  However that is not to say fasting is bad for you, emotionally, mentally or physically.  In fact your body needs this time to heal, physically, mentally, and emotionally. You need the stressors in your life to make you grow stronger spiritually and emotionally, in the same way you need exercise to make your muscles grow stronger.

Part of the problem with modern society, and in my opinion the reason so many people take medication is because we are so concerned with being nice and polite all the time, we are not honest with others or ourselves.  The truth is life hurts. It hurts a great deal. Everyday. That has not, can not, and will not change.  They call them growing pains for a reason, and they never stop.  You are alive.  You are learning. And you are hurting.  Sometimes growing and learning is fun, sometimes it sucks.  Correction SUCKS!!!1!!!  If I could write that word on the moon so everyone could see it, I would.  Sometimes that's life.

Modern life teaches us that this must not be so. Life is supposed to be good all the time. Everything is supposed to have a happy ending.  We see it in our entertainment. We spend copious resources making our lives easier and easier with fancier and fancier tools. Designing new and more powerful drugs so we feel good all the time, except we don't.  We think this is because we are fundamentally flawed, and we are.  You know it. I certainly know I am fundamentally flawed. You are not ok. I am not ok.  But that is ok.  Life is not about ease, and leisure, and always being happy.  If that is your goal I pity you. You have set an impossible goal.

The reason I accepted that truth is very personal, as your reasons will be for accepting it.  But once I accepted that life sucks, I could set about changing it.  However I do not do that by walking out of my life, but by changing my life, or at least those things I can change.  So I change those things I can, but much of the suckiest bits of life are outside of my control.  I cannot change that certain people I am close to are addicted to substances.  I cannot make those choices for them. I have tried. It ended badly for both of us. I cannot change the fact that my house is worth half of what I owe on it.  We all have many things in our lives we cannot change.

But when you accept the truth that life sucks, and you cannot change other people, or even many of the circumstances that make your life suck, you begin to see the places you can make changes to make your life not suck so much.  I can look for a better job. I can limit the amount of resources I invest in people who drain me emotionally, financially, or otherwise.  This is not impossible to do while popping pills to make your world seem better, but it is more challenging in my opinion. 

Part of the reason we think our lives suck so much is because we accept and believe the lie that things are supposed to be good all the time, and they aren't.  We know they aren't good all the time for us.  We also know they are good for everyone else. We are wrong. None of those statements are true.  Our lives are not going to be good and happy and sunshine and rainbows and unicorns all the time. No one else's life is either.  Those lies, the lies we tell ourselves, the lies others tell us in entertainment, advertising, and the lies we tell others because we are afraid they will know we don't "have it all together" like everyone should, are killing us.  Because none of it is true, rainbows are an illusion. Does your life suck? Maybe. Will it always suck? To some degree, maybe. But it gets better if we work at it.  However it can only get better if WORK at it.  We must strive for wisdom and knowledge, maturity and health. To do anything less is committing a very, very slow suicide.

Part of the fasting process is spiritual and emotional.  Your journey will be different, but it will entail spiritual and emotional components.  Accept and Embrace those components, as they will determine your long term success.  You cannot hope to rebuild your physical body and leave the emotional, and spiritual body as bereft and devoid of nutrients, as you had your physical body.   It will hurt. It will be worth it. Rainbows are a beautiful illusion, and a reminder that rains come, but rains also go.  Once the rains are gone, the sun shines, the ground is refreshed, and life goes on.  All is right with the world, because of the occasional rains, not in spite of them.

Summer Sun Cooler
A very earthy juice similar to a Green Hornet
3 Summer Squash
1 Celery Heart
3 Broccoli heads stalks and all
3 Limes
Pulp or juice with your favorite method and enjoy. Remember juice like life doesn't always have to be sweet, but it need not always be bitter either.

Settling Into the Rails

Now with that title you might think I got off track. But there is a difference between being on track, and settling into the rails.  The train from the clip above didn't really get off track, but it wasn't riding where it should have been in the rails. That is what I mean.

You can be on track, but unsettled, riding too high with not enough speed.  Basically being and causing a big problem for everyone around you, including you. That is how my journey has felt. Right after my fast I was riding high with the success.  A few, (yeah right I wish it was only a few), money problems and months later I went to the nutritionist.  Sure enough my diabetes, (or as some call it DIEaBeetus, thank you Wilfred), was cured.  I have since experimented with a variety of foods. Some of that falling in the good for me category, some not. Not enough to get me off track, but enough that I am finding my limits are much different than I thought they used to be.

For instance, I can now eat spicy food. And by that I don't mean the toned down spicy, I mean full on full spice, curry habanero pepper spicy. This is new for me. Now yes Peppers are technically fruit. They have seeds. I am not about to put them in a fruit smoothie I don't have a recipe for yet. I will be working on where to integrate them into a recipe for a vegetable juice/smoothie.

But the spicy food is a healthy way I found to deal with stress. For whatever reason it releases brain chemicals not dissimilar to morphine. However instead of relying on the short term fix of so called "comfort" food laden with sugars, I punish myself a bit with some spicy curry or a spicy cabbage soup. This does two things. It reminds me that my life is generally a good one. I can afford food when I want it. I have a roof, a job, clothes, access to cheap entertainment, in short I am the 1% of the world that has easy access to an easy life. Second it puts me in charge of my health and takes a small step forward in dealing with the 400 pound gorilla that was my body. (See what I did there?)

Today is technically the second day of my second fast. I feel so good about that. Just about that. Yesterday was a bit of a cluster job. My fasting/diet/exercise partner got sidetracked with her husband. (Relax it is my mother so eww, get your mind out of the gutter you pig!) And I don't have an issue with that, in fact I want her to work out her personal problems. She is my mother after all, but it meant that yesterday was beans, and derailed food. However I am not one to let perfection become the enemy of good. So since I couldn't make my juice for today I stopped by the store and bought a no sweetener smootie, and Green Hornet juice fresh made.  I have nuts I keep at the office, (no this time I mean the kind I can eat), so I ate those unlike last time where I was trying to cut down on all food. I know that I don't need to be perfect. I just need to settle into the rails a bit more.

This time I know that I have to keep the protein high, so nuts are a good thing for me on the fast.  I won't be doing any heavy exercising until I know I am ready for it. That doesn't mean I am taking it easy.  The second time around I find my sleep pattern is all wonky.  I fell asleep Saturday at mom's house for like an hour, (I didn't snore so that is something else I probably need to have checked out to see if I still need my CPAP). Now I know that I should have all kinds of energy, but I haven't been sleeping well.  Between stress at work, looking for a new job, and dealing with addicts in my life... Ugh.

But the takeaway, "Life doesn't stop EVER!! No matter how much you need or want it to stop, it won't."  Sometimes it goes off the rails, but I have found a way to keep it on the rails. It's just that sometimes you are going to have to ride higher and faster than you would like.

That is what I mean when I say you have to be ready in my last post.  Mentally giving up food is like getting separated. Something you depend on is going away. You have to do without the mental crutch that food provides. You know it is coming back, and you know your relationship will be better when it does return. Absence can make the heart grow fonder, because you aren't expecting food to meet a need it cannot.  The flavor is richer.  The love can be heightened.

Today's recipe is for my own version of the green hornet juice:
1 Cucumber
1 Celery heart, (yes the whole thing)
1 bunch Parsley (Italian or curly it doesn't matter)
2 handfuls of Spinach
1 Lemon (you don't need this, but I find it helps to brighten the flavor)
So pop them in your juicer, and blammo out pops a very healthy for you lunch or if you aren't there yet a snack. Remember the doughnut, ramen noodles and hamburger you ate yesterday. Well you know what I say, Everything has a price. Perhaps it is time to stop paying for what you ate yesterday, and enjoy the price of what you can eat today or tomorrow.