Diet, Lite, Low-Fat Tip
Quick tip: if you are eating or drinking anything with diet, lite (light), or low-fat on the package label, then you are eating or drinking too much of it. Switch to the non-diet, full-fat version. If the amount consumed is truly your concern, then eat or drink less of that product. Your body will thank you for the simpler and less processed food you will consume, and your mind will thank you for disposing of the diet / lite / low-fat label.
Spacious Thought
Anxiety. Anxiety is a projection away from the present moment into the future — near futures, far futures, imagined futures. It’s the mind spinning its wheels in possibilities that have not occurred, and in most cases will not occur. It’s those topics that stoke our worries and fears.
Recently I was spinning my mental wheels, anxious of another conceivable and troubling circumstance. This wasn’t a new topic, but a fear that my thoughts often turn to. It isn’t important what that topic is — it’s one of those persistent, runaway thoughts that we wish we could move on from. As I wondered again how I could move my thoughts away from that anxious topic, a simple analogy occurred to me: thought takes up space.
You Aren’t What You Eat
There’s a common saying: “you are what you eat”. It’s a harmless enough saying, right? Loosely we know it’s just scratching a surface, yet in general we nod our heads and think: “yeah, whatever I put in my body is going to have an effect on me, positive or negative.” Usually this phrase is used negatively, like a shake of the finger at a food stuff believed to be unhealthy.
There’s a deeper thread to “you are what you eat”, though, that isn’t worth loosely accepting. It’s a thread that throws out the “you” and says that the food you consume can fully constitute you — that your external environment fully constitutes you. “You” are merely an outcome of the external world.
The implications of this simple phrase may exemplify our modern thought. Why didn’t we collectively settle on a phrase that instead puts “you” into the primary position? It’s not far off after all — a phrase that instead honors “you” would be: “you eat what you are”. Think about that:
You aren’t what you eat — you eat what you are.
This simple rearrangement of words completely changes the meaning of the phrase, making you primary and the external world secondary. When you eat what you are, the objective world becomes a symbolic reflection of a subjective you. This is much more responsibility than we’re used to dealing with. We’ve instead decided to put the responsibility on food, television, companies, pollution, bad bosses, and microbes. We’re viewed as products of our parents, society, generation, or genes.
Are you ready to take responsibility for your world, or will you continue to let your world take responsibility for you? It’s a change in thinking, and it starts with recognizing the roots of simple daily phrases and thoughts that we take for granted.
The Wisdom of Action Heroes II: Deliberate Action
Action heros take action, but what kind of action do they take? What makes their action different from the day-to-day action we typically take?
Magic Pills
Magic pills are those modern concoctions, those man-made potions that provide “effects” to the body. Down our mouth, into our stomach, assimilated into the blood stream, out to the various organs — the body becomes a stage for a magic show beginning the moment we first decide to take the pill.
