I found this incredible post about self-love today. I am sending it to all of my psychotherapy clients, and thought many of you would find it valuable as well.
I am republishing it with permission from tinybuddha.com. You can find the original post here.”
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What Self-Love Means: 20+ Ways to Be Good to Yourself
by Banu Sekendur
“Self-love requires you to be honest about your current choices and thought patterns and undertake new practices that reflect self-worth.” ~Caroline Kirk
If one more person told me to go love myself I was going to levitate into the air and pull one of those impossible martial arts moves from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I was sick of it!
What the heck does loving myself mean? Were they talking about bubble baths, pedicures, and cucumber masks? It turns out there is so much more to self-love than just pampering ourselves. I found this out the hard way. Continue reading “What Self-Love Means”→
Today is packed with “must do” events for me. I have little to no time to write, but when I saw The Daily Post challenge in my inbox, I knew I had to make the time. The prompt is:
Remember the seven cardinal sins? You’re given the serious task of adding a new one to the list — another trait or behavior you find particularly unacceptable, for whatever reason. What’s sin #8 for you? Why?
The seven cardinal sins listed in the Bible are: wrath, avarice, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony. So what would I consider to be the eighth cardinal sin? I knew my answer immediately. For me, it is to waste food when so many people in the world go hungry.
In 2012 the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) of the United States concluded that the U.S. wastes 40% of its food. That waste is valued at 165 billion US dollars.
Much food is wasted at the farm level. Seven percent of the food we grow in the U.S. is never harvested. Some of the causes: damage from pests, disease and weather; prices are too low to make it worth harvesting: over-planting; food safety scares; and labor shortages.
Food is lost between harvest and sale due to culling- removing products based on quality or criteria such as size, color, weight, blemishes and sugar content. Some businesses report that 25% of cucumbers and 20-50% of citrus and other fruit are edible but not marketable. One packing house said they can fill a dump truck with 22,000 pounds of discarded tomatoes every 40 minutes.
Waste occurs in processing as well. A lot of this waste is caused by trimming of skin, fat, peels, bones, and pits. Waste during processing can also be due to overproduction, product and packaging damage and technical malfunction. A study in the U.K. found that 23% of food loss occurred as the result of these factors. Another study found that only 50% of potatoes made it through the processing plant.
Waste during the distribution phase is caused by inconsistent refrigeration, keeping food on the loading dock for too long, imported food delays, and rejected shipments.
Retail waste occurs when perishable foods are not sold. The food may not be sold because customers want perfect produce, the package sizes are too large or the food is damaged, outdated or unpopular.
Four to ten percent of food from restaurants, cafeterias, fast food businesses and caterers become waste before it reaches the customer. Waste also occurs when the customers do not finish the food that is served to them. It is estimated that diners leave 17% of their food uneaten and most of it is not taken home. Increased portion size has also increased the problem of waste.
The study reports that Americans throw out 25% of the food and beverages they buy. In part, that is because wasting food is not seen as an issue. Confusion over label dates and spoilage from improper storage, poor visibility, partially used ingredients and misjudged food needs are also problems. Impulse and bulk purchases, poor planning and over preparation are considered significant factors as well.
The study reports that decomposition of uneaten foods causes 23% of the methane emissions in the U.S.
(Please see the report for much more detailed information as well as the original sources for the statistics.)
Solving the problem
The NRDC report lays out solutions for all of the problems. For this post, I’m going to focus on some things that each of us can address personally.
The report comments that Americans discard 10 times as much food as the average South Asian. I imagine we waste more food than that most, or maybe all, other countries.
Many of us grew up with parents demanding that we eat our food because of the starving kids in China. As a result, many members of my generation tuned that message out and disregard the fact that there is some truth to that way of thinking. I believe it is important for us to become responsible citizens of the world.
That does not mean we should force ourselves or our children to eat when we/they aren’t hungry. It is also not about shaming people into cleaning their plates. Instead I think we should focus on how much we buy, how much we cook, and how much we put on our plates. Children will be more likely to finish their food if they are given a small portion. They can always ask for more if they want more. That is true for adults as well.
We can also compost leftover food. In Seattle we are able to compost all foods, even diary and meat products through the city system. That service is not available everywhere of course but most of us can compost our vegetables and other non-meat, non-dairy foods at home. By doing that we will create rich soil compost for our gardens.
I believe it is important for all of us to take personal responsibility for helping to solve this problem. What ways do you prevent food wastage in your home? Are there any new commitments you are willing to make to reduce your food wastage in the future?
She sat on the floor in the corner of the darkened room. Her knees were curled against her chest and tears were streaming down her cheeks.
She had been in psychotherapy for some time and she had made significant changes in her life, but she felt as if she was living in-between two worlds and didn’t belong in either. She couldn’t go back to her old life because therapy had opened her eyes to reality; returning to a state of denial was not possible. Her prior coping skills didn’t work anymore, but her new skills weren’t solid. She felt awkward and clumsy as she tried out new ways of being in the world.
She was even more disturbed by the emptiness she still felt in her heart. Her therapists, group members and friends had given her so much love, yet she still felt empty. It was as if her heart was a bucket that had a hole in the bottom. Whatever came in, flowed out within hours. She wondered what was wrong with her.
As she sobbed in frustration, she had no way of knowing that only a week later she would sense that the hole had sealed over. It didn’t stay sealed, but since it had clearly happened, she would begin to have hope that the sense of emptiness would end.
As the days and weeks continued to pass by, the hole would become securely sealed and her heart would begin to fill. Never again would she experience that overwhelming sense of emptiness.
The change you seek may be just around the corner.
I suspect all of us prefer living from a sense of abundance rather than scarcity. Moving from scarcity to abundance, however, requires that we change our unhealthy beliefs and behaviors, many of which have probably become habits.
Over the years, some of my clients have found it helpful to make the abundance contracts that I describe in this post. Each contract is based on principles I have learned in my personal and/or professional journey. Continue reading “Creating Your World of Abundance”→
In June, I wrote a post Judgment or Compassion about the negative judgments I have whenever panhandlers approach me asking for money. Many readers commented on that post. Their responses were interesting and helpful to me, and hopefully to each other as well.
I decided to try Oliana’s suggestion of putting some dollars in my pocket and to generally give when asked, without thinking about it. I liked the experience of being free from negative judgments a lot. Feeling compassionate brought a smile to my face. On the days I did that, there was only one time that I didn’t give anything, and that was when the person was obviously very drunk. I used my discrimination and chose to withhold the gift in that instance.
About a month ago, I had an experience that I considered not writing about but have decided to share it. There have been two times in my life when I have felt “tested” on this issue in a way that felt very mystical. In the first instance, I believed I failed the test. The second time was this recent occurrence. Continue reading “Compassion Wins!”→
I remember reading many years ago that whenever our life path crosses someone else’s, whether it be for a few minutes or an extended period of time, we have something to learn from the person and something to give them; that our meeting is no accident. I don’t know if that is true, but I find it to be a useful concept regardless.
By nature I am a very strong introvert so it is easy for me to stay within myself and not interact with other people. I know when I do that, however, I am potentially missing out on some important opportunities.
I imagine from time to time, all of us meet people in situations where our meeting seems very synchronistic, times when we sense that something bigger than random chance is operating. During my last two trips to India, I had four experiences like that. Continue reading “When Our Paths Cross”→
Two years ago a friend gave me a bee balm plant. Last year had quite a few blooms. This year it has taken off. At this point it is 64 inches tall and is full of blooms!
Bee balm is known to attract butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. It is also considered edible and medicinal.
While I have been delighted by the number of blooms on my plant, I have also felt distressed by how few bees there are both in the bee balm and in my garden as a whole. I’m also concerned that essentially all the bees are bumblebees. There are almost no honey bees despite the fact that I have neighbors three houses down who have honey bee hives. It has never been this bad before.
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”-William Shakespeare
“Self-love requires you to be honest about your current choices and thought patterns and undertake new practices that reflect self-worth.” ~Caroline Kirk
Living, Learning and Letting Go 