Sunday, December 23, 2012

I spent most of the past 24 hours eating and sleeping, living in this calm, serene and quiet atmosphere – had many, many naps and I think it has to be helping.  Apparently lots of healing is done that way.  Wonderful day.

Over the years I’ve been receiving emails from a company called Simple Truths.  They have many gift books, motivational posters, etc. etc.  The odd time I would order a little hard cover book to give to people who lost loved ones, who needed inspiration or who I thought would appreciate a thoughtful gift.  Most of the time they were on sale for $10.00 – nice to keep on hand and use them for beautiful little hostess gifts too.   

Years ago, Dr. Phil, on one of his shows, said:  Before getting out of bed each day, you should be thankful to be alive and make a decision to give 110% to your spouse that day and you will have a successful marriage/relationship.  I’ve always liked that theory but here is another theory. 

It is offered from Simple Truths and is written in a book called The 100/0 Principle written by Al Ritter.

I trust I'm not plaguarizing by sharing this info.

In essence, you take full responsibility (the 100%) for the relationship, expecting nothing (the 0) in return. Implementing The 100/0 Principle is not natural for most of us. It takes real commitment to the relationship and a good dose of self-discipline to think, act and give 100 percent. The 100/0 Principle applies to those people in your life where the relationships are too important to react automatically or judgmentally. STEP 1 -  Demonstrate respect and kindness to the other person, whether he/she deserves it or not. STEP 2 - Do not expect anything in return. Zero, zip, nada. STEP 3 - Do not allow anything the other person says or does (no matter how annoying!) to affect you. In other words, don't take the bait. STEP 4 - Be persistent with your graciousness and kindness. Remember to expect nothing in return. Avoid Knower statements/thoughts like "that won't work," "I'm right, you are wrong," "I know it and you don't," "I'll teach you," "that's just the way it is," "I need to tell you what I know," etc. Instead use Learner statements/thoughts like "Let me find out what is going on and try to understand the situation," "I could be wrong," "I wonder if there is anything of value here," "I wonder if..." etc. In other words, as a Learner, be curious! Principle Paradox When you take authentic responsibility for a relationship, more often than not the other person quickly chooses to take responsibility as well. Consequently, the 100/0 relationship quickly transforms into something approaching 100/100. Interesting..............

The structured meal plan for the day sure helped.  I was able to reach my goal of protein content and my goal of fiber content and felt pretty good about myself – not one bit of junk food, so last night decided to unleash the old gal.   Munching Myrtle had been tied up in the closet all day with a very large band of duct tape across her mouth.  She’s had the odd teaspoon sample of ice cream over the past 6 months and hasn’t had much more than that in years.  So we decided to give her an entire dish of Chapman’s Cherry Jack Yogurt and added chocolate sauce on top!  Well, you should have seen her go……………………….she was twirling, doing the jig and dancing around like she  was possessed!  The sounds coming out of her while enjoying this treat were disgusting.  She was just about to lick the dish when we took it away from her and gave her a piece of peppermint bark instead.  She was in heaven………………

As you can imagine, my weight is down quite a bit from my natural set point but just wanted to make a comment about that.   The clothes in my closet range from Size 8 to Size 16  and a One Size Fits All because that’s how much I can fluctuate during these periods of health problems.  My heart cringes when I’m at a low period before, during or after treatment and someone says “oh my,  I wish I could be that thin” or “Oh that Dianne, she is soooooo lucky….she can lose weight so easily!”, especially knowing that I am going through a bump in the road of life.    I think you can imagine how remarks like that can hurt.  So folks, please put your brain in gear before opening your mouths.  Trust me; you don’t want to lose weight this way.  Ok, so that’s my rant for the day.

I'm sure everyone is busy with last minute preparations, last minute gifts and preparing for a nice time  with friends and family.  It's a great time of the year - enjoy.  From all reports, Santa is loading up and ready to fly! 

Have a great day - I intend to.

PS  I must have changed my settings because I can't seem to reply to any 'comments' - sorry.