I wrote a post some time ago called “Fifteen Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life.” This was a quotation from a former pastor, who may have gotten it from the book Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices, Change Your Life by Tommy Newberry. (I just googled the phrase and this book came up—it looks good! I now have it checked out from that great library service Hoopla.) Anyway, the window of opportunity has now narrowed from 15 minutes to 5 seconds. Very efficient, no? I found out yesterday about this totally, insanely motivating woman named Mel Robbins through a rather circuitous route that started with my usual Thursday listening of the “Happier in Hollywood” podcast hosted by Sarah Fain and Liz Craft. They were interviewing someone who had interviewed Mel on her own podcast, so I went over and listened to that episode (language warning) and then watched Mel’s TED talk (access below) and a video or two or her on her own. Now I’m a Mel Robbins fan.
Debi Simons
It’s the Prep Work that Counts.
The title comes from a recent BSF lecture, an idea that is so obvious that it gets overlooked, especially by me. Our teaching leader was talking about the Billy Graham crusades that took place in past years, when whole stadiums would be filled to hear the dynamic preacher. But, as she said, the results came about not just because of Mr. Graham’s own spiritual standing, Scriptural knowledge and personal magnetism but because of the advance teams’ work. They would go to a city where a crusade was to take place and meet with churches, scope out the venue, recruit volunteers to help with everything from counseling to cleanup—on and on. Without all of that unseen work the crusades just wouldn’t have happened, or if they had they’d have been much less successful. Whether or not you agree with how the message of the Gospel was presented in those crusades, and many don’t, the fact is that they were masterpieces of organization, and of organization that was done ahead of time.
The Four Tendencies and Food–What I Talked About this Weekend at Camp
I just had a wonderful weekend at Camp Elim, a Christian camp near Colorado Springs, where I was privileged to speak in a couple of workshops. My two topics were “What’s Your Tendency?”, an examination of Gretchen Rubin’s theory about the four ways that people respond to expectations, and “How Food Fads and Myths Can Harm You,” in which I took on some of the current ideas floating around in the eating theories world, with a few side trips into my views on alternative medicine. I may get myself into trouble with that second one! My actual group for that session was small as I was competing with a very popular one on marriage, and they all seemed very receptive to my ideas. I gave everyone who attended the sessions the opportunity to sign up for a resources page, so I decided to just turn that material into a post for all my readers to access. Here ’tis:
Just Say “I Love It”
Oh man! What a morning we’ve just had! Have to mention this before I get into the meat of this post. So . . . we’ve had some plumbing issues sporadically since moving into this house, and the general opinion of the people who’ve looked at things was that the sewer pipe that goes out to the street was blocked with tree roots and also that a piece of the pipe (one of those old clay ones) had broken off and fallen down into the inside. It was therefore going to be necessary to dig a trench and replace that section of pipe.
Are You a “Person Who Can’t Be Helped”?
I’m poaching from a podcast again today, this time from “A Slob Comes Clean” by Dana White. Now I’ll be honest (as I’ve said before): she does rather tend to go on and on. I don’t always listen closely, but I find her to be a comforting presence in my ear as I do some uninspiring chore. Every now and then, though, I’d say at least once per podcast, she comes out with a true gem. Watch for a further gem, this time from her blog, later on this week. But for now I’m emphasizing something she said in her recent podcast #166: “The Fine Line between Challenges and Excuses.” Really, honestly and truly, you should listen to this episode. I’m not even dealing with how helpful her designations of “challenges” and “excuses” are, except to say that you rise to a challenge and sink with an excuse. She goes into great detail giving examples of how that difference plays out.
Kennedy’s Character Revealed at Chappaquiddick
I’ve written before about the JFK assassination in reference to an excellent book about the conspiracy theories surrounding it, and I’ve been obsessed with that event for years. (For awhile I even bought into one of the more outrageous CT’s—that JFK’s body was spirited off the plane out the back door, taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital, and then had its head wounds “modified” before the autopsy took place. The shenanigans that would have had to take place in order for this to happen are unlikely, to say the least. But boy, was I riveted! That book is Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy by David Lifton, and no, I don’t recommend it, unless you have a taste for fantasy. You’ll note that I’m not giving my usual Amazon link to it.)
Two More Books by the French Woman
I have posted about Mireille Giuliano before, notably in reviewing her first book, French Women Don’t Get Fat. I truly love that book and re-read it periodically. To me, it’s a sound, common-sense set of principles for getting and staying slim no matter what your nationality, and I ignore the ideas that are just kind of silly. Sorry, Mireille, but very few people who live in America visit France often enough to buy their prunes there. (Of course, that’s assuming that you buy them at all . . . ) And we don’t go mushroom hunting much around here. Nor do we have blueberry bushes in the back yard to supply us with those little nutritional powerhouses. Nor do we divide our time between New York City and Provence, where there are excellent farmers’ markets year-round. (I always wonder whether or not Mireille ever goes into a regular supermarket. Probably not!) I ran into an interesting article in the UK newspaper The Guardian (but now I can’t find it) in which some Frenchwomen were interviewed about how they view their weight, and they said that Mireille’s book was a big, fat (sorry) pain in the neck because it perpetrated the myth of always-thin French women. But, and this is a very important but, those interviewees weren’t really following the FWDGF principles. Instead, they were making a practice of overindulging at restaurants, because it’s supposedly frowned upon not to eat a lot when you’re out on the town, and then starving themselves the rest of the time. Not, not, not what Mireille says to do! She would say, in her charming French accent, “Who cares what’s considered cool or not cool? You eat the way you want to, and if people don’t like it, tant pis!” (Or, as my mother used to say, “If they don’t like it, they can lump it!”) So there it is.
Magic Flute Musings
A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled “Loving the Mozart Requiem Isn’t the Same as Singing It.” My beloved Cherry Creek Chorale was performing the entire work, with orchestra, in the original Latin, and I was so excited about it. But when we actually started working on the piece I was pretty lost. I ended up investing in a professional recording with the tenor part being sung over the top of an actual performance, a move that helped tremendously. That performance was such a joy, on many levels. But boy, did I work! In the end, though, to stand up there and be so sure of my part was an experience I’ll never forget. I said in that post, “If I really love it, I’ll be willing to do the work. But the love isn’t a substitute for the work but the inspiration for it.”
You Can’t Ingest and Digest at the Same Time—Healthy Eating Patterns, Pt. 2
Didja read the article I posted about recent research on how timing affects weight? Here’s a snippet that should motivate you to read the whole thing:
[Biologist Satchin] Panda says that mice and humans — and probably most organisms — are not built to simultaneously ingest food and metabolize it. “Everything cannot happen at once,” Panda says. “The body can’t take in calories and break down calories at the same time.”
A Challenging and Informative Book of the Week
Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
As I often say, I try to keep politics off my Intentional Living blog, but I also like to post about the books I’m currently reading, and sometimes those two areas overlap. Whatever your political leanings, though, I consider this a book required reading as we move ahead into the unknown territory our country is now traversing. (That sounds a little pompous, I guess. After all, the future is always “unknown territory,” isn’t it?) You may remember that I wrote a post about the Gary Kasparov book Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped