Category Archives: Discipline

Clearing the past helps manifest the future

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          It’s helpful to begin the new year with a clean slate. However in order to do that, it is important to deal with any situations or setups that are connected with or derived from the past. If I don’t clean up what I need to from the past, I will have created a big mess that impedes my progress in the year to come. I learned this the hard way one year when I accumulated a huge pile of items that needed to be filed because I had never found the time to do it conveniently. Thus I had an inconvenient task to deal with. This year I have been dilatory about filing new poems where they were meant to go. When I have done this a little at a time organizing them is much easier.

          The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah begins with a thorough cleansing and refurbishing of the entire home, most especially the kitchen. This is a symbolic way of wiping the slate clean for new beginnings. I now know the value of this. Being thorough  with this process, however does take time. Though I have accomplished some of my cleaning up, much remains to be done. For instance, I have yet to go through and scrub down my refrigerator. While I have every intention of tackling this task soon, unfortunately I haven’t found the right time just as yet.

          Still, nothing in there has developed an odor to alert me to an inedible substance that must be discarded. As far as I can tell I have kept up with my leftovers, and there is nothing lurking in its back for me to dispose of. Sadly, my refrigerator does not hold as much as I wish it did. Whenever I do a big shopping I usually have to reshuffle whatever is on the shelves in order to fit in the new items, and that tends to keep things current. I need to do this especially when adding to my freezer which needs to hold things like shrimp on sale as well as an assortment of the good frozen organic vegetables we like so much.  

          I have gone over my desk, organized it and thrown out the various lists, notes and other accumulated paper that were not current. I also threw away a bunch of pens that no longer wrote and put away the ones that did. In addition I purged my wallet of coupons that were not valid because they were past the expiry date. We still have some Christmas gifts that we have not yet managed to connect with their recipients; however I am confident that this will happen in good time. There are still drawers to tidy, and my filing cabinet to go through.

          I can think of more and more if I try. There are writing projects on my computer I haven’t looked at in some time. I could discard them or continue to consider them. There are old poems I could look at and decide whether to keep, revise or eliminate. Yet where do I stop? I might go on cleaning and clearing until summer if I kept at it. At some point I must decide what is enough and what will be too much. Soon I need to stop and decide it’s time to move forward. The space garnered by elimination will help me and that’s a good reason to do so.

Lose Weight Gently the Three Bite Way

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Orange squash 2When my children were small I used to insist they eat at least three bites of anything they thought they didn’t want to eat at all. My theory was that by my having them do that, they would grow up to eat a broad variety of foods. I was even bold enough to insist that any visiting friends do the same. No one ever seemed to make too much of a fuss over this, nor did I get any bad feedback from my children for doing that either. They did grow up to be adventurous eaters and to enjoy trying new foods.

Some children use food as a kind of bargaining chip or power play. Mine didn’t thank goodness. Nor did I tell them what my mother used to say to me: Eat your (beans, eggs, etc.) there are little children starving in China who would love to have what you have on your plate. I wasn’t allowed to get up from the table until I had finished whatever it was I was supposed to eat. No three bite rule for me! When it was liver, which I hated with a passion, I cut it up in small pieces and swallowed them whole with my milk.

Working with a limited budget, my well-intentioned mother tried her best to make nourishing meals. I did grow up to be healthy, so it must have worked. However when I was eight I became chubby and stayed that way. Like many I have tried a number of different ways to slim down, slenderize, or otherwise lose weight. Some methods were more successful than others. However in my opinion calories in, calories out is the key. Less consumed equals more taken from what is stored in the body:portion control works.

In my search for dietary strategy I came across another very good suggestion. It’s called the Three Bite Rule. You can have three bites of anything highly caloric you want to eat, and you can eat anything highly caloric you wish to as long as those three bites are all you eat. It’s also true that after three bites you really do not get the same taste experience as you do from your first three. This is especially true of anything cold like ice cream, but also of sweet things. The real test though is to be able to put down your fork or spoon after the third bite and count yourself satisfied. When you do this, you’re creating a habit that allow for both pleasure and discipline, an excellent combination.

To be successful with this strategy it is important to allow yourself to really taste whatever you are eating. You can roll it around in your mouth and take your time chewing it slowly and thoroughly. Even liquids can be “chewed.” It is also true that when you eat anything slowly and chew it thoroughly you are satisfied sooner, and that applies to meat, vegetables and grains as well as anything on your three bite list. Taste buds get “tired.” The appetite, however keeps us munching away even when we are not getting the most out of what we are eating. Portion control, as well as the three bite strategy is much more successful if you eat what you put on you plate slowly and with attention.

The Discipline of Remembering

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Garden Conversation042

I can clearly remember lying in my bed upstairs and wishing I was able to stay up and be part of whatever was happening. I also remember sitting at the table, a boiled egg or perhaps worse, a piece of liver before me—things I had no desire whatsoever to put in my mouth. If I wanted to leave the table I had to finish whatever I was given. One way I managed was to cut the liver into small pieces and swallow it whole. I can’t remember how I dealt with the egg.

My life as a child had lots of discipline in it. Authority figures held sway over my life. Often it was a parent: “Time to go to bed,” or a teacher: “Be sure to do your homework in a timely manner.” It never occurred to me that these disciplinarians were stand-ins for what comes when we are adults. In my innocence I thought discipline had to come from someone telling me what I had to do, not that one day I would need to tell myself.

Unfortunately for my childhood dreams, I need to enforce my own discipline in order to function in the world in an orderly manner. There is really no one that can do it for me. As a child I dreamed of the day I would be my own boss, as I thought of it then. I yearned for the day there would be no one to tell me I had to go to bed if I didn’t wish to, or make me eat something I didn’t wish to eat. Of course that is how a child thinks and the reality does not occur to us because as children we simply cannot conceive of it.

I remember thinking how grand it would be to be a grownup with no one to tell me what to do and when to do it. I could, I believed do whatever I wished, whenever I wished to do it. Children are so innocent. Little did I know then what I had to remember to do for myself when there were no more grownups to tell me and I was the grownup. As an adult I find discipline needs to be addressed often. For instance, there is the discipline of deadlines. If I wish I can ignore them though I do so to my peril. There is also the simple discipline of my body, which needs to sleep eat and go to the bathroom, occasionally at inconvenient times.

As I have grown older it seems to me there are more and more things I need to do each day in order to maintain my health and sanity. These require me to remember them as well as to do them. Lists help, yet were I to write everything I need to do daily down, it would be a lengthy list indeed. Practicing the discipline of remembering is perhaps the most important one of all, and in addition to doing my exercises and taking my vitamins, I practice this each and every day.