Advice and Unacceptables

Often times at work we pose questions of the day, odd random facts - find the hidden talent among our Team Members, High/Low of your day or week, GBD (What would you Give, Brag About, and what you Desire).

Recently a dear friend of mine, asked me two questions.  What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given?  And, What are your Unacceptable's? (In response to Pastor Kris's Blog). So I have been thinking about this throughout the week, and not so surprisingly, I cannot pin down just one piece of advice; and I have quite a list of unacceptable's.

Unacceptable
I keep coming back to the unacceptable of: It is unacceptable to handle people without compassion.  I just find it unacceptable to be disrespectful (emotionally, physically, and verbally) to anyone.  Everyone is fighting their own battle, and it is not our place to judge others and belittle anyone.  Associated with wrath, as well as pride - desire to be more important or attractive than others, and excessive love of self.

I feel as though it is unacceptable to live up to anything less than your greatest potential.  Not for anyone else, but for yourself.  You owe it to yourself to utilize your God given talents, to flourish, and be happy.  It often takes a lifetime to figure out what these talents and potentials are, but none the less, it is unacceptable to not embark on the journey, and to settle for anything less than true happiness.  Essentially Sloth - failure to utilize one's talents and gifts; as well as Acedia - neglect to take care of something that one should do.

I find it unacceptable to abuse the vessels that God has given us; abuse via drugs, alcohol, food, physical harm, physical abuse to others and sexual abuse.  While I have always viewed the physical forms of abuse unacceptable, more recently I came to the conclusion that I find severe obesity and neglect for ones own health to be unacceptable.  God has given us physical vessels and thousands of individuals (myself included at one point) have polluted our bodies with drugs, alcohol, unhealthy food, all to the point of morbidity.  Essentially Gluttony - overindulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste, and additionally greed.  When we are gluttonous and continue to want more.

Advice


On to the second question.  What is the best advice you have ever been given?  When contemplating this question, I came up with several tidbits that have been passed my way throughout my life.  And it seemed that I couldn't put my finger on specific words, but rather ideas that have stuck with me.

One piece of advice however is rather specific.  In high school I had a teacher that required us to remove all the contractions in our writings.  (Change don't to do not).  I have found that by doing this, not just in formal writing, it gives your words more powerful meaning, and more professional sound. (Better believe I just went back over this post to make sure I had actually done that).

The other pieces of advice have all been general ideas of positive thinking, believing in ones self, the thought that impossible is nothing, and of unconditional love.  My parents have always been supportive of me and my dreams, whatever they have been.

My dad was a coach of mine for many sports teams and just a general life coach - and at the end of one of my basketball seasons, he gave everyone a cool motivational quote, and a hand written message on the bottom.  Mine is probably still in my memory box somewhere in storage.  But at the bottom of mine was written. "IWABT. I Will Always Be There." This is just one of the millions of examples of unconditional love that my parents have given me.  Through this, I have realize that I can do whatever it is I dream, without fear of being left alone on my journey, or without a safety net of their love.  Because of this unwavering support, I have indirectly been given the advice to follow my dreams and that the sky truly is the limit.

And for that I'm forever grateful.

Paleo Palate

I have always said that some of my dream jobs would to be:

a personal chef for someone (preferably a pro athlete)

a pastry chef (love making the beautiful treats, just not eating them)

a pro athlete

or a Therapist focused on Compulsive Hoarding/CBT Therapy.

This weekend I purchased, prepped, produced, and provided approximately 40 Paleo Meals.  I have been cooking Paleo meals for the last two weeks for myself and Peter; and Angel (Peter's Sister's Boyfriend) jumped on the Paleo wagon this week.  

Only about Half of what I bought at Sam's ($182)

1 Trip to Sam's Club (gotta love Bulk)

1 Trip to Rainbow (for the little things, herbs, rutabaga, etc)

1 Trip to Walmart (for more tupperwear) 

1 Day in the Kitchen

3 Crockpots (2 Beef, 1 Pork)
Yields: Healthy Paleo Meals for 3 people, for a week.


Although it was a lot of work, and a long day in the kitchen, it is so very worth it to have healthy prepared food throughout this week.  I still tend to do some preparation throughout the week (breakfast, and a salad in the evening), it does save time and energy.  

Cooked at my Mom's house this week (family time)

After, packaged and labled Paleo Meals!

There are a few other 'Paleo Pods' in the area, and from the Bloomington North Lifetime Fitness. Some of my LTF Team Members get together on Sundays and prepare Paleo meals for themselves, their families, and some of the Personal Training Clients.  We might have to get this process down to a science, and go into business.  I can't tell you how many people have expressed to me that they would indeed eat healthier if someone either told them what to eat, or better yet cooked the food for them.  Stay tuned, and let me know if you are interested in participating (cooking, organizing, eating, etc.)

Personal Treasure, Alchemist, etc...

As a woman, I tend to have an issue with the desire to multitask.  Well, that is an understatement.  I REALLLY like to multitask.  This characteristic leaks over to any and all aspects of my life, including reading.  A trip to the library generally results in me carrying a stack of 5-6 books, that I honestly never really get through.  Before completely finishing one, I'm on to the next, never to finish the previous. 

With that said.  I'm incredibly proud to announce: I FINISHED A BOOK!  For Christmas an employee of mine gave me my very own copy of the Alchemist, and I read about 3/4 of it aloud to my mom, Jack, and Pete on our way to Osseo Christmas eve.  I had about 40 pages to go, and I finally finished yesterday morning.  As the cover of the book states, once in a great while, a life changing book comes out.  The Alchemist is definitively one of those pieces of literature.  There are several passages that are quite profound, and honestly I'm still digesting them all. 

You will have to read the book yourself to really get a grasp on the deep meanings, but much of the context deals with following your heart, and finding your Personal Treasure.  I found the following passage incredible.  (Santiago, the main character in search of his Personal Treasure, suddenly felt the urge to stop his journey)

"....Naturally it's (your heart), afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won."  "Well then why should I listen to my heart?"  "Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet.  Even if you pretend to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world."

I think that we all have that voice inside of us, that holds strong our beliefs, desires, and dreams. The more we try to ignore or silence these voices, the further we drift from our Personal Treasure.  I recently had my first experience with Energy Work, which basically consists of tapping into our bodies energy, chakras, and balancing our force centers.  After my session, my practitioner revealed to me many truths that she discovered during our session.  

She stated that I have an enormous energy field, and also that my energy is easily shifted.  Meaning, she had no problem balancing my chakras and force centers, but because of that, I'm easily influenced by negative energy and basically other peoples negative attitudes.  Which could explain why I've been feeling incredibly kiddywampus lately.

She also asked if I feel as though I'm highly intuitive, as she felt as though my third eye chakra (function: direct perception, intuition, imagination, visualization, Self-Mastery) is quite larger than normal.  Being that I'm an INFJ, it is said (and I agree), that I have uncanny insight to people and situations, and get feelings about things, and intuitively understand them. So I have always felt very intuitive.  Its hard to explain, but I just have feelings about things, and freakishly am often dead on and right about them or specific events.  Okay, back to my point.  Listening to your heart, and those voices inside of us.  Although we ignore them or stubbornly refuse to listen to them from time to time, they are always there.  And as a result, leave us feeling kiddywampus.  Yuck.  Might have to work on that one.

Another passage that I love, from The Alchemist is the follwing: 

This passage brings me back to my Bodybuilding Journey.  I found that in that journey, when I was pushing myself towards that specific treasure, I learned and discovered things about the world, about relationships, and about myself that I would never have seen had I not had the courage to try.  And because of that, life felt luminous.  I have never felt more alive.  I think that by listening to our hearts, and searching for our Life's Treasure, our lives and beings are ignited and truly alive.

Good stuff maynard.  Okay, I'm way past my deadline for getting to the gym this morning, but I was in need of cranking out a post.  So, my parting words..if you haven't read The Alchemist, please do.  If you want to borrow my copy, I'd be happy to get it to you.