Bailout Solution
Just thinking about the bailouts of the banks and now GM has made me physically sick. Only my Pilates and Qi Gong classes have saved me from puking. “Centering and Breathing”. But I came up with a brilliant idea, if I do say so, of a way to make this bailout thing easier to swallow for all of us.
Background for my idea: Nassau County, NY has Drunk Driving laws that were pushed by MADD to curtail irresponsible drivers and send a strong message to the community. I became aware of them when my relative who will remain unnamed got stopped for DWI and was “prosecuted” under these new laws. First there is the jail time and fines that we all know about and then the psychological counseling and driver’s education classes, even community service, but did you know that they will take away your car, you still have to pay off your car loan minus the car. Once you are allowed to drive you can only drive to and from work (that is if you have a car) and you have to use a breath testing machine in order to start your car (and even while driving you have to constantly check your breath). And you have to pay a monthly fee to maintain the breath machine. You have a parole officer who you report to periodically who checks to see if you are working and holding up your end of the deal. And now there is a clever deterrent I call the website of shame where they post the people’s names who were convicted of drunk driving so anyone in the world can see them. ( I am not sure if they include a photo. Maybe someone can let me know about that.) It is said that the shaming tactics have had a significant effect on the incidents of drinking and driving in Nassau County.
Now to my genius idea. Anyone who runs a company into the ground while paying themselves a ton of cash and in turn destroys the livelihood of thousands of hard working Americans is at least as irresponsible as someone who has too many beers and gets behind the wheel. Therefore, all executives of companies requesting bailouts, including the banks and auto makers, have to do the same things that an irresponsible driver has to do. Simple.
First there is jail time, fines and community service. ( They can put on the orange vests and clean the highways.) Then mandatory psychological counseling and definitely education classes to make sure that they know the pain and suffering of the community due to their irresponsible actions. I think the workers will put together some great education classes for the executives.
Now to the repo man. Any personal assets gained while running the company such as a nice big house, fancy cars, planes, cash, artwork, whatever, are all up for grabs to be sold at auction (just like they do in Nassau County) and the money will be distributed to needy people out of work. Once all of those are accomplished there will be constant surveillance for a few years checking all business decisions with a “business” parole officer. And the best part. The shame. Every executive needs to participate in a parade of shame that will take place in every major city, like a tour, and people can come and look and throw soft objects like nerf balls or rotten tomatoes at them. Heckling allowed but no cursing. No hard objects or sticks that could injure anyone.
You may have some better ideas, let me know.
That will make me feel a whole lot better mortgaging our children’s future to bail out these execs. I bet that this will be a great deterrent!!! No more bailouts in the future. Mark my words.
Where are those MADD moms? Jump into action to push this legislation through right now. This will effect our children even more than stopping one person here and there who has the possibility of hurting someone.
You may think I am kidding but I am not.
Invest in Yourself
Shoes. A great pair. I mean the ones that make you excited, not those ones from the shoe “outlet”. Easily $300. That is almost the cost of a gym membership in my suburban neighborhood. Now I would have a hard time passing up those shoes too, but, priorities. Guess how good those shoes are going to look on your fat feet?
You can make a cheap pair of shoes look good on a great body. You can make anything look better on a fit body with a healthy smile and great posture. And you can make anything look bad on an unfit body with decaying teeth and bad posture.
Priorities.
And anyway, if you feel fat and ugly you probably won’t feel like dressing yourself up.
“Bad habits breed worse habits” I have to quote that form Morten Dithmer who teaches the Franklin Method. And he also said “good habits breed better habits”. How true! Once you start slouching you only get worse. It is a fact. But once you start taking control of your health you only get better- better eating breeds better eating, etc.
Invest your money, time and energy into creating a better physical and mental body. Buy the shoes, or whatever it is that you spend that money on(coffee drinks, porno, jewelry, home decorating…), after you invest in your health.
Send me your stories, good and bad, of what your priorities have been.
My video tip on this is on YouTube
When Science is Un-likeable
She said ” I don’t like ’science’.” I looked confused. She elaborated ” they say one thing then change and say something else contradictory. It is very inconsistent.”
Well she has a point.
Vitamin E, the greatest, -wrong- vitamin E can be harmful, or… can it? We only use 10% of our brain (because we have no idea what the rest is doing) -oops- , the rest is not empty but actually full of activity. The 10% rule, out the window. The high carbohydrate diet, that is the way- oh, no – low carbohydrates, that’s the ticket. Babies, keep them out of the parents’ beds to make independent children – no, no, no – keep those little ones in our beds, it makes them secure and feel loved. The list goes on and spreads out.
It is true that science is the basis of our civilized society and our progress in technology. But it is worth taking a step back and taking a breath and remembering that our human flaws come out in “hard research” just as they come out in fantasy. Truth and common sense can get fuzzy behind the fury of progress. We can easily get caught in the “science” and become blind to simple reality.
The point is to be skeptical even of the science – just as we are skeptical of the mystics. Keep an open mind and a level head. Continue learning and questioning all the time. Don’t take life or yourself too seriously and never surrender the power of reason to anyone, including those who profess to be the most reasonable.
Eat the food of the earth. Enjoy the planet. Move the body because that was what it was made for. Challenge the mind and body together for health and peace.
Oh No! Oprah, There is an Anti Secret.
My beautiful friend who is enlightened way more than I, saw the “Secret” and reported to me that it is the most greedy, selfish, unhealthy thing she has encountered for a long time. The thought of people just thinking something and getting material things in exchange for their new attitude is incomprehensible to her. The materialism is extremely distasteful to my soul-full friend.
Let me describe my friend. She is a person who nurtures others always and is constantly searching for greater connectedness to our planet and our human-ness. From her perspective, success is measured in physical health, mental well being and brain/body balance. She optimizes her senses to be able to experience life fully every second and to understand human nature with clarity and acceptance. Please do not think she is “new age” in the sense of being a misfit in society. She is perfectly functional and eats meat and looks just like any beautiful practical put-together person. She looks like she has figured out life and is comfortable with herself.
I loved her perspective on the Secret. I do ascribe to positive thinking (the glass is half full) and being grateful for things (see my past blog about Oprah) but I see my friend’s point that the success of those who posses the Secret is measured in money. It is kind of sickening.
In our society it is easy to make money if you are reasonably intelligent, more or less functional and stay directed to the course of making money. But it is harder to make our bodies and brains be responsible to the planet. It is harder to tread lightly than to make a big mess. Yet we reward and hero-ize the money makers who leave destruction in their wakes. We say that they know some great secret that we want to posses. Maybe the real secret is that thinking you know the secret only means that you have no idea what it really is. Cruel.
Getting Fat on Gossip
Gossiping is like bingeing on a pint of ice cream: while I am doing it it feels good and I can get easily carried away in the moment but when I am finished I don’t feel very good about myself and say that I will not do that again.
I think gossip fills my body with negativity. Even though no studies have found that negativity carries calories, I think it does add weight to the body. It weighs down the mind with useless words and thoughts. The stress and attention to meaningless subjects usurps energy and forces me to eat more to overcome the energy loss. And eating more often means consuming a greater amount of calories then expended.
Even worse, it makes the face ugly and the body morph into bad posture. It damages the the digestive system and the blood flow. Or so it feels.
Gossip is unproductive and worse, it undermines productivity. It polarized and skews. It seems like fun, until someone inevitably gets hurt. It gives a rush, with a withdrawal. It fakes us into thinking we are forming bonds with the friends we are sharing gossip with but actually it is eating away at the friendship with every judgement and secret.
Gossip has an addictive seduction that is hard to resist. But just like any addictive drug it is hard to break the Gossip habit. Sometimes old friends have to be let go, at least for a while, so that we can rearrange our relationship patterns to stay away from gossip.
Focusing on healthy thoughts and things that move us along in life, makes us skinnier, freer, better citizens and more beautiful.
Oprah’s Secret…
she rules the world!
This whole “Secret” thing is just the same information that has been in the universe since the beginning of time but Oprah has renewed the focus on it for the great benefit of humanity. I love this stuff. In the 80’s it was called “New Age” stuff and stuff for those bleeding heart liberals but now it is bottom line basics for the successful entrepreneurs. So totally cool. Can there be a better influence on the human race than Oprah’s feel good, do good, be good and enjoy this life propaganda(and I mean that in the best sense of the word).
It is hard to make complex things simple and it truly is complex to get through life with a positive bent on every experience but it does create seemingly happy individuals and I think I could say it is a fact that what you put out you definitely get back. I have been intimately involved with people who make every sentence a negative and every experience a bad one, they are unable to enjoy, be grateful or accept happiness. I fall into that trap myself sometimes.
There is an awesome song by Tesla the band from their Into The Now album called “What You Give” and I listen to that song every time I feel resentful or ungrateful for things or experiences, especially between people. I will quote one part, “it’s not what you got, it’s what you give, it’s not the life you choose, it’s the life you live”. How much more poignant can you get.
I feel energized simply by the discussion that has radiated out of Oprah’s newest “discovery”. I am a little resentful that my story was not discovered too – so I could make a bundle on the hype. But I am putting out my positive energy to the world anyway because even if it does not generate money for me, it generates peace and allows our race to move up to higher thinking and greater harmony with this universe, something that is extremely necessary at this time of world crisis.
Thanks again Oprah!
Praising the Life Out of Our Kids
The New York magazine often has timely, interesting articles. Here is one from the February 19th issue that I found interesting and important. “How Not to Talk to Your Kids” by Po Bronson. (Incidentally, Mr. Bronson has written a lot of great stuff about life and living.) I seem to become inspired to write about the stories in this mag, funny how that is.
Anyway, the gist of the story is that all of this positive reinforcement that we give our kids is resulting in the opposite of what we are intending. The more kids are told they are “smart”, the less they are apt to take intellectual risks. They become un-acheiveing instead of high achieving, afraid to make mistakes and feel “not smart”. They become more insecure in relation to the amount of times they are told they are great.
To extrapolate, it would then seem that telling your kids that they are so beautiful (to impart a good self image) is just making them insecure about their looks. If you compliment them with no real merit, it backfires.
And it makes sense. The brain likes to be challenged to overcome odds. If we spoon-feed compliments to the muscle of the mind it gets confused and feels like it cannot rely on itself. Maybe it can be compared to feeding bread to the ducks. The ducks become docile and rely on the non-nutritional bread to survive. They lose the natural survival instincts and rely on humans to dole out carbos instead of foraging for their food.
Although we feel compelled to boost up the children with awards and compliments, our real job is to give them the truth and let them feel disappointment. Even though they become sad or frustrated, it is a greater service to them to tell them the hard truth than to make them smile at the moment.
I myself hate getting compliments, I would much rather have an honest critique, something that makes me improve myself, rather than empty enthusiasm or niceties that are given for feel-good-ness.
Just as the body responds to hard work and sweating, the brain wants to be challenged and even outshined by others to become strong, resilient and flexible.
Here is a cool functional training gym that will challenge and build strength of mind and body in NY:
ThirdPower Fitness
My Video Podcast:
Hottieworkouts
Real Women Eat Real Food
I was thrilled to see the article in the NY Times Magazine on January 26, 2007 “Unhappy Meals” by Michael Pollan.
I have to quote the opening line “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants”.
And then I think of the Movie “Brazil” where the people order food from the menu that looks beautiful in the photos and when it comes it looks like a pile of dog food or creamed spinach. But the diners eat it like it is acceptable and delicious. It is absurd, no??
Mr. Pollan’s in-depth article goes back through the history of nutritionism and follows our national obsession with nutrients versus actually eating nutritional food (it does seem like “Brazil” is coming to us very soon) and how this obsession has only led us into obesity and health problems, rather than its goal of exactly the opposite.
The practical advice that has been around for a while is to shop the outside aisles of the supermarket starting from the produce, moving to the meat and fish and ending up in the dairy section. If you need some oil or condiments, try the international food section. Most of the rest of the food in the store is not really food at all but manufactured products for eating that mostly should not actually be consumed, not for nutritional reasons anyway.
I never buy low-fat or “healthy” foods. I eat real butter when I use it and I eat real cookies(preferably from a bakery) and real meats(but not too often) and fish from the fresh meat and fish sections. I also buy “regular” bread products and eat them sparingly.
The point is simple: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
Read the article and let me know what you get out of it.
My video podcast:
Hottieworkouts
Jon Koga’s new dvd:
Koga for Life
Liz Gillies’ Bodylift dvd:
The Body Lift Workout
The Sexiest Communication
In person: words get mixed up, body language gets confusing, too risky to say things to the face of another, too many words come out
A letter: a beautiful way to document your feelings, a gift, something you open and tear off the envelope, long winded, convoluted, handwriting, an art-form
The phone(ground line): connected to the house, terrestrial, earthy, family
The cell phone: convenient, cool, public, everyone can hear you, calls get dropped or crackly
email: like a letter, can be tantalizing, can be a lengthy mistake, how to sign off? (cheers, best, love, ciao) a dilemma
The text message: very personal, a secret, extraterrestrial, short, mysterious, the sexiest way of communicating
I love the text message, the way it is a little whisper in the ear to someone in a public space. I love the way it tantalizes and opens the imagination to the words that are not written. I love hitting the send button and anticipating the return text. And sometimes no message comes back and leaves you broken hearted. But it is worth it for the fun.
The Anorexic Brain, for life…
I find Anorexia to be so very interesting. The lovely women who died in Brazil have brought back to the news, once again, the story of useless death. I did my anorexic and then bulimic time so I feel empathy and comradeship with these women. Being a body person is wonderful and difficult. People who are intimately involved with bodies have a special connection with life, movement, human beauty and human ugliness. I was able… at the time I would have said I was a failure… to make it out of those destructive “stages” and back to being a mere mortal; back to a shameful animal who has to destroy life in order to live. It is disgusting. Beauty and the Beast- we are all the Beast. I sometimes still feel pangs of remorse when I eat.
I have thought that the best way to cure the anorexic brain is to plop an anorexic person in the middle of a starving population and leave her there. The brain flips, in anorexia, into believing that food is a killer and therefore will not accept it into the body. Maybe if the brain experiences a group of people coping with true starvation, it will flip back on its own. Who knows???
But the most interesting thing, I feel, about this brain flip is that it actually happens at all. It is the will of the person that turns the brain against the deepest rooted, DNA based survival instinct of eating. It takes a ton of will power, imagination and determination to get to the point of brain flip. But it is possible, and once it happens it is at least as hard to turn it back. Sometimes the physiological changes are too deep for recovery.
I wonder if that energy could be used in a different way- to heal the body. I wonder if there is something to be learned and valued from the anorexic person’s ability to reverse instinct and turn her brain against the forces of nature that created her. Maybe someday we can train our brains to turn against destructive cells or bacteria. We could learn from the anorexic the tricks and techniques of changing the brain, but for life instead of death.
There is no silver lining to dying of anorexia but the power of the will is formidable as these creatures have shown us.
My video podcastHottieworkouts
The Koga workout
Kogaforlife
Don’t forget to check out The Middle Manager’s blog for healthy tips to keep you on track in my friends list.
