We live in a pathologically dissatisfied world.
And Im going to tell you why.
Because we love to compare.
Go around the world and discover that people aren't happy with their
bodies. Filipinos want to be fair-complexioned like Westerners, and so buy bleaching stuff. Westerners want to own bronzed bodies like ours, and so purchase tanning lotions. Those with moles have them removed, while those who dont strategically implant beauty spots. Some people want to shed a few pounds to look like Ally McBeal, while others want to gain some baby fat to look like Drew Barrymore. When are we ever going to stop and simply be happy with how we look?
We live in a sick world, I tell you.
And that sickness is comparisonitis.
Take a look at wealth.
When we drive our old Toyota, it really suits us fine. We feel blessed
in fact when the rain pours outside and we feel snug and cozy on its faded upholstered seats. But the moment we see our own officemate (or neighbor, or buddy, or cousin, or brother) drive his sleek sky-blue, four-door, four-wheel-drive Honda Rav4, we automatically feel like
third-class children of God. Next time we drive our bumpy, noisy, rusted, dilapidated Toyota (notice how all the defects come out all of a sudden?), we feel deprived, dispossessed, pariah, debased, and only a little higher than the insects of the earth.
Listen carefully.
Bill Gates total assets are worth $60 billion. Thats more than the GNP
of some small countries. Tiger Woods earns $80 million simply by smiling on TV in a Nike shirt. And the stars of the sitcom Friends are paid $50,000 per episode!
My point? No matter how hard you work, there'l still be some people
who will be richer than you are. And there'l be some people who will be more beautiful, have more sex appeal, have more boyfriends, and have more problems.
Try it for once. Stop looking around. Don't compare!
Don't compare her nose with your nose.
Don't compare his wife with your wife.
Don't compare his salary with your salary.
Don't compare her breast size with your breast size.
Don't compare here kids report card with your kids report card.
Don't compare his prayer group with your prayer group.
Don't compare her cellulite deposits with your cellulite deposits.
For crying out loud, stop comparing and start living!
And you'll be happier with your life, I guarantee.
This is crucial: The most difficult thing in the world is to be who
you are not. Pretending and trying to be someone else is the official
pastime of the human race. (I don't think dogs and cats and cows and horses have this problem.)
And the easiest thing in the world is to be yourself.
Be happy. Live! There must be a reason why God made you tall or short
or fat or thin or bumpy all over.
Love who you are!
Bo Sanchez
The Boss
Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts
Things We Can Learn from a Dog
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Loving Our Dogs
1. Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joy ride.
2. Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
3. When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
4. When it's in your best interest, always practice obedience.
5. Let others know when they've invaded your territory.
6. Take naps and always stretch before rising.
7. Run, romp and play daily.
8. Eat with gusto and enthusiasm.
9. Be loyal.
10. Never pretend to be something you're not.
11. If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
12. When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.
13. Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
14. Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
15. Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
16. On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
17. When you are happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
18. No matter how often you are criticized, don't buy into the guilt thing and pout.
Run right back and make friends.
Its Not Just Sushi
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Campus Chronicles
BY: By Perri Nemiroff
Follow your passion, and success will follow you.
~Arthur Buddhold
Journalism--yes, in order to be a journalist you need to be able to write, but in order to be a broadcast journalist, you need to have some skills using the video camera as well. At my college, if your GPA is high enough you can opt to pursue a professional certificate through the university's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. All of the classes are non-credit and students participate in the program as an elective course of study. Being that I was studying broadcast journalism, I decided to get a certificate in digital filmmaking. I took some classes about lighting, sound and even interviewing, but the one that I learned the most from was most certainly a class called Digital Video Production I.
The class was held one day a week for eight hours each day over the summer. By the end of the class you were supposed to have finished your own short film. My professor began discussing potential topics we could pursue. He suggested doing something that had a personal meaning, but that would also appeal to a wider audience. I didn't even listen to the rest of the lecture because I knew exactly what my video was going to be about: sushi. I love sushi. Most people love sushi. I couldn't go wrong.
About a year before, I had given the Sushi Challenge at a local Japanese restaurant a shot. In order to complete the challenge, you have to eat thirty-two pieces of sushi (for a woman) or fifty-two pieces of sushi (for a man) in twenty minutes. Every time a contestant completes the challenge, the amount is raised by one. Considering I don't eat raw fish, doing the entire challenge with tomago (egg) and shrimp made it a little difficult and I lost by four pieces. As it turned out, the two worst parts about losing were paying for your sushi and leaving with a bit of a stomachache. I still thought it was worth it.
Soon after the professor approved my topic, The Sushi Challenge went into production. I found my actors, my equipment, and got the okay from the restaurant owner. In order to be able to film the entire thing by myself and still capture every moment and angle, I decided to have one of the actors fake the challenge. Basically, I paid for fifty-two pieces of sushi, had him pretend to stuff his face, and got myself dinner at the same time. I brought back my footage and spent the last month of class editing my material. On the last day of class I showed everyone my film. Their reaction astounded me. Not only were my production skills praised by the professor, but everyone in the class genuinely enjoyed my short.
I couldn't just let the film die with the class, so I decided to submit it to a few student filmmaking websites. On a whim, I also sent a copy to the New York International Independent Film & Video Festival. To my surprise, not only did I receive a call from a festival representative to tell me my film had been chosen, but I was also contacted by Yahoo.com. Someone at the website had seen my video on another website and wanted to feature it on their homepage for twenty-four hours. The Sushi Challenge went up and the phone calls started to pour in. I spoke to people I hadn't spoken to since my first years in high school. People I barely even knew sent me messages on Facebook just to tell me how much they enjoyed it. After the twenty-four-hour time period was up, over half a million people had seen my film. Their reactions were rather overwhelming.
The excitement didn't end there. November 11th rolled around--the day my film was being screened at the film festival. I was especially excited because my film was being shown in a theater that I often visit to see big, box office films. I arrived at the theater accompanied by my parents. Not only did my cousins come, as well as some close family friends, but a significant number of my sorority sisters too! You know that clichéd warm and fuzzy feeling that everyone talks about, but you don't think it's real? Well, it is. My film was screened and the reaction was more than anything I could have dreamed. I made people smile. I couldn't have asked for anything more.
I've since graduated from college, but have still left a legacy as the creator of The Sushi Challenge. And I'll never forget about the sushi craze I created.
Chocolate Is Not the Enemy.. (Chicken Soup for the Soul)
Getting thin wasn't just about changing my eating habits, it was about listening to what my body was telling me.
BY: Jan Henrikson
A prayer flashed through my mind, one that my friend Marti Matthews shares in her book, Pain: The Challenge and the Gift. It goes like this: "Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!" Which, she suggests, can be repeated with hands thrown in the air.
I repeated it silently all the way to a breakfast with one of my best friends, a bearer of wonders and wise words. While I collected myself, she whipped out a flyer from her bag and slapped it on my empty plate. "Taking Your Own Shape: Explore Your Relationship with Food and Body," it said. What? Oh my God. The most important part of praying for help is recognizing it when it arrives. Darn, I'd have to go.
The class was intimate and scary. Six women sitting on couches. That first night, I felt like someone who'd arrived from another planet with a "Waiting for Instructions" note pinned to my soul. Please tell me what to do and when to do it. Give me the whole calories in/calories out regime with a few collages thrown in to express my creativity and no one will get hurt. Now!
Instead, we talked. And we listened. We talked about our bodies--what it felt like to live in them. We shared our love and lack of love for others and ourselves. We set no weight-loss goals. We suffered no weekly weigh-ins or calculations of the foods we ate, and in what proportions. Got no stickers for eating right. Or scowls for eating wrong.
In fact, Dr. Becky Coleman, our teacher, said there was no right or wrong, only alive and less alive. She needn't have told us. She radiated acceptance. She embodied an invitation to a whole new level of living that was spacious and expressive. She'd weighed 300 pounds, not once, but twice. Eight years ago, she lost 170 pounds and has never found them again.
How strange. My body was a Frankenstein to me, out of control, hunted and feared by the villagers. Becky practiced compassionate experimentation. Explore your weight. Don't condemn it. Perhaps hunger was a message from your deep, wise self. What if your body generously expressed what you were afraid to? Well, if my body was speaking, it was mumbling, that's for sure. Maybe because its mouth was full.
One evening we introduced our "Favorite Food Friends" to each other. A vegetarian brought a huge plate of steak and french fries. I showed my old faithful Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby ice cream. Chocolate-covered peanut butter–filled pretzels tucked into vanilla ice cream. I'd met Chubby Hubby years ago when my then live-in boyfriend moved away. It was everything: salty, crunchy, soft, sweet. Thanks to Ben and Jerry's planet-friendly ethics, I could save myself and the world at the same time.
"You say you crave variety," said Becky. "Interesting variety in that carton." She invited us to experiment with our food friends. Did we reach for them in anger? Sorrow? What would happen if we held the tension that triggered the craving just for a moment?
The next time Chubby Hubby called, I paused with spoon in hand. I let my body experience the ache for peace with my lover. Then I ate the ice cream.
Instead of slapping my thighs and cursing my willpower, I became curious. So there really were emotions trying to emerge between bites. My body relished the pauses from chips and chocolate. Attention at last! I began to enjoy feeling fluid and elegant instead of leaden. Twenty pounds fell away. Discovering that my cravings, my clenched heart, my anxious belly had answers for me was like being lost and panicky in the woods and discovering the trees could speak. Now when trees speak, I listen.
[source]
Coffee Shop Kindness
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teens Talk Growing Up
By Christine Walsh
By Christine Walsh
Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you -- not because they are nice, but because you are.
~Author Unknown
My senior year of high school was an extremely hectic one, to say the least. If I wasn't studying and worrying about my grades, I was juggling multiple extracurricular activities or attempting to make sense of my plans for college. It seemed as if my life had turned into one crazy cloud of confusion, and I was stumbling around blindly, hoping to find some sort of direction.
Finally, as senior year began to wind down, I got a part-time job working at the local coffee shop. I had figured that the job would be easy and, for the most part, stress free. I pictured myself pouring the best gourmet coffees, making delicious doughnuts and becoming close friends with the regular customers.
What I hadn't counted on were the people with enormous orders who chose to use the drive-thru window, or the women who felt that the coffee was much too creamy, or the men who wanted their iced coffees remade again and again until they reached a certain level of perfection. There were moments when I was exasperated with the human race as a whole, simply because I couldn't seem to please anyone. There was always too much sugar, too little ice and not enough skim milk. Nevertheless, I kept at it.
One miserable rainy day, one of my regular customers came in looking depressed and defeated. My coworker and I asked what the problem was and if we could help, but the customer wouldn't reveal any details. He just said he felt like crawling into bed, pulling the sheets up over his head and staying there for a few years. I knew exactly how he felt.
Before he left, I handed him a bag along with his iced coffee. He looked at me questioningly because he hadn't ordered anything but the coffee. He opened the bag and saw that I had given him his favorite type of doughnut.
"It's on me," I told him. "Have a nice day."
He smiled and thanked me before turning around and heading back out into the rain.
The next day was miserable as well, rain spilling from the sky. Everyone in town seemed to be using the drive-thru window because no one wanted to brave the black skies or the thunder and lightning.
I spent my afternoon hanging out the window, handing people their orders and waiting as they slowly counted their pennies. I tried to smile as the customers complained about the weather, but it was difficult to smile as they sat in their temperature-controlled cars with the windows rolled up, while I dealt with huge droplets of water hanging from my visor, a shirt that was thoroughly soaked around the collar and an air conditioner that blasted out cold air despite sixty-seven-degree weather. On top of that, no one was tipping. Every time I looked into our nearly empty tip jar, I grew more depressed.
Around seven o'clock that evening, I was in the middle of making another pot of vanilla hazelnut decaf when the customer from the day before drove up to the window. But instead of ordering anything, he handed me a single pink rose and a little note. He said that not too many people take the time to care about others, and he was glad there were still people like me in the world. I was speechless and very touched; I nearly forgot yesterday's deed. After a moment, I happily thanked him. He told me I was welcome and, with a friendly wave, drove away.
I waited until I saw his Jeep exit the parking lot, then I ran to the back of the shop and read the note. It read:
Christine,
Thanks for being so sweet, kind and thoughtful yesterday. I was sincerely touched by you. It is so nice to meet someone who's genuinely nice, warm, and sensitive and unselfish. Please don't change your ways because I truly believe that you will excel. Have a great day!
Hank
As the day passed, I had plenty of complaining customers, but anytime I felt depressed or frustrated, I thought of Hank and his kindness. I would smile, hold my head up high, clear my throat and politely ask, "How can I help you?"
