I need to do something to feel healthier. Since limiting my food intake doesn’t work for me, I’ve decided to ADD to my food intake! My goal is to eat 9 servings of vegetables a day. I did this once years ago for three days and my skin GLOWED. It was an amazing and very noticeable difference. I looked SO healthy. I don’t know why I stopped doing it, but I’ve wanted to do it again ever since.

Here’s a list from Healthy Eating Made Easy that you can print out of what a serving of vegetables is.

VEGETABLE SERVINGS: SIZES

* Asparagus, canned 7 spears
* Asparagus, fresh 5 spears
* Avocado Half
* Aubergine One-third of a large one
* Baby sweetcorn 6
* Baked beans 3 tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Broad beans 3 heaped tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Broccoli 2 large florets
* Brussels sprouts 8
* Cabbage 3 heaped tbsp shredded, (1/2 cup)
* Carrots 1 large
* Celery 3 sticks
* Cherry tomatoes 7
* Chickpeas See Pulses
* Courgette Half a large one
* Curly kale 4 tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Eggplant One-third of a large one
* French beans 4 heaped tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Kidney beans See Pulses
* Lentils See pulses
* Mixed salad Cereal bowl full (1 cup)
* Mushrooms, button 14
* Onion 1 medium
* Parsnip 1 large
* Peas, fresh, frozen or canned 3 heaped tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Potatoes Never count towards your daily vegetable servings, in any form
* Pulses, cooked: kidney beans, chickpeas, lentils etc 3 heaped tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Salad leaves, lettuce etc Cereal bowl full (1 cup)
* Scallions 8
* Snowpeas Handful
* Spinach, cooked 2 heaped tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Spring onions 8
* Sugarsnap peas Handful
* Sweetcorn, fresh, frozen or canned 3 heaped tbsp (1/2 cup)
* Tomato 1 medium
* Vegetable soup 1 serving of fresh or canned soup
* Vegetable sticks Handful of mixed - celery, pepper, carrot etc
* Zucchini Half a large one

When I did this before, I drank V-8, and ate large salads full of vegetables on beds of greens. I’m not sure, but I might not have counted the greens which may mean I was getting more than 9 servings of vegetables. I’ll try out the true 9 servings and let you know if my face glows again.

I love her examples of talking to people and helping them find a way to live that works well for who they are, finding ways right around any stuckness they might be feeling. I want to do that for myself. I can relate to a lot the descriptions of the 9 subtypes of scanners. In an effort to find my patterns, I wrote down everything I could remember being interested in and everything I remember liking to do during different times of my life.

Today I realized, hey, I have ALL my journals here! I have my old journals stored in a trunk and I brought my ten most recent journals with me on my travels so my subletor wouldn’t stumble across them. I have (about) 42 journals! Can you believe it? Maybe “42″ really is the answer to the ultimate question.

If you want to play along at home, this is what I’m doing as I go through my journals:

I focus on these things as I read:

1. Topics I was interested in
2. The essence of what I was looking for when researching my interests
3. What I was doing
4. What goals I had (What I thought I should be doing)
5. Fears about what I was doing with my life
6. Things that worked/how I functioned best
7. What was going on when I was happy

Having a focus is helpful because I don’t get bogged down in the potentially depressing and cringe worthy things I wrote.

I have a different piece of paper for each topic and write down anything that comes up for each topic.

I’m investigating goal tracking software that will hopefully help me track and share my progress. I’ve been looking for a goal-tracking Wordpress plug in, or some kind of blog badge where I can give myself some virtual stars everyday to track my progress. Here is what I’ve found so far:

1. GoalsTogether you can type in a goal, share it, and it has a blog badge, but there is no simple way to check off completing the goal. There is a space where you write the percentage complete the goal is. 0-100%, I guess you just keep going back and changing the number everyday. Won’t work for my purposes.
2. Move Mountains has a very useful and easy to understand way of entering your goals, plus great advice for making and managing your goals. I recommend checking this one out if you don’t care about adding the goal tracker to your blog or website.
3. MyProgress.com I didn’t get too far into setting goals with My Progress Log. It kind of creeped me out during the registration phase. It wanted to know exactly where I live and my occupation. I started to suspect that my info was going to be used by marketers in the near future. Once I registered, my front page encouraged me to input my earnings. After all, as it says on My Progress, “Your profitability is essential when it comes to figuring out what a person you are.” Not the one for me.
4. SuperViva I like the tone of the site. It seems fun, friendly and open. It seems like a fun way to list all of the things I want to do, places I want to travel, books and movies I want to see etc… It would work for all kinds of lists. You can add the list to your web page or social networking site. Looking at this site made me realize that I don’t really want a goal checklist as much as I want a habit tracker. I want a daily checklist kind of tracker. Still searching for the tool I want to use.

I found these goal tracking tools at Mashable, you can go there to see more tools, screen shots, and longer descriptions.

After looking at all these goal tracking tools, I realized that:

What I really need for my purposes is a HABIT tracker!

Tune in tomorrow as I rate and review online Habit Trackers.

My answer begins with who you should marry:

I think it makes sense to marry someone you are crazy about, someone who lights up your life and twinkles your toes, and is a decent person who treats people kindly, who is willing to work on a relationship, and who has goals that are compatible with yours.

So, if things aren’t going well and you think maybe you want out, should you call it quits? I have three answers for you:

1. YES

I think that if people are in abusive relationships, they ought to get divorced RIGHT AWAY! Don’t try and fix it! Get thee out!  The hard part is, what is abusive? That can be a trickier to answer than you would think when you are in a relationship and much easier to see when you finally get out.

If someone hits you, sexually abuses anyone, or in any other way degrades your soul, then I would JUST LEAVE (make you sure you research how to do it safely if you are worried about the other person hurting you- make your safety your highest priority.)

2. MAYBE

I just read on the Divorce Busting site that 1/3 of the marriages ending in divorce are abusive. That means 2/3’s aren’t.
If you are not in an abusive marriage, and you never felt twinkly about the person you are with, and you don’t have kids, I just don’t know. My only advice is that you do everything you can to improve the relationship and even if you decide not to try and keep your marriage alive, at least do everything in your power to be a true friend to the person you married.

I think that if you do decide to get divorced even after you make every effort to improve your relationship, the thing that will comfort you is that you have a healthy relationship of some kind and that you treated and continue to treat the other person very well. (And who knows, you might find that you can create a very satisfying relationship with the person you are with after all.)

3.Do Your Best To Save Your Marriage

If you once felt twinkly about your partner, if the person just annoys the hell out of you, you have lost interest in them, if you feel repeatedly rejected because they have lost interest in you, if you no longer find sex satisfying or any other host of problems- but they are not abusive, and especially if you have kids,

Then I would say do EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING in your power to make it work.

I’m thinking about this right now because I stumbled across the site: Divorce Busting and while I am very, very glad that divorce exists for anyone in abusive relationships, and I HIGHLY recommend high tailing it out of there (you can be so much happier when you are with someone who treats you well, you won’t even believe it), there are many people whose families are torn asunder who probably could have mended things if they had just known how. That is really tragic.

I really wish some of my friends, and my friend’s parents had access to this information back in the day.
Especially interesting articles from the site:

1.  The Walk Away Wife Syndrome
2. Hopefully Ever After 
3. He Must Be Teething

-Phylicia Rashad

It’s the traditional time of year for goals and I seem to be in synch with the universe. I’m thinking about my future. Every day, ok, every hour, I think of something new I want to do. Watching the caucus results makes me want to go into politics.  It’s so exciting! (I must be a true grown up now because I find politics interesting and I talk about my health.)

Then I watched Phylicia Rashad on the Tavis Smiley show and was inspired by her story to think that maybe I want to move to Mexico City. I have a good friend from Mexico City, maybe I could go with her!

Whatever I do, whatever you are doing, I think Phylicia Rashad’s advice is good. I love that woman. Good luck to you in the new year. Set your sights on what you really want, study, and don’t pay too much attention to the obstacles.

With love,

B.

You can download and print out the goal workbook here: www.tonyrobbins.com/pdfs/Momentum2006.pdf

* Only exercise if I feel like exercising.
* If I feel like moving, let myself move! (I just discovered this one!)

These decisions are about noticing how I feel and completely trusting that what I want to do is alright. What would taste good to me? What do I really want right now? Do I want to lay in bed for an hour, or go on a walk in the park, or take a long hot shower, or do an exercise tape I haven’t done in years and then stop after 14 minutes, or go running and then sprint on some blocks juse for fun?

It’s a huge leap of faith! You mean, I could just eat whatever I want to?? Really? Me? :) And still be alive and stuff? And not weigh 300 pounds and stuff?

You mean, I could just, like, exercise when I want to?? And then like, lay around or dance in my living room if I want to? Like I’m just some kind of animal? ;)

Here I am deciding to let myself eat whatever I desire and move when, if and how I desire to. (Sounds very hedonistic no? Scary to inner puritan, no?) When I first made the decision to NEVER DIET AGAIN, about 2 years ago, I ate hot pockets everyday for about a month. Then I went through a licorice phase. I gained 25 pounds!

And then I eventually, blessedly, stopped obsessing about food.

I stopped eating more than I wanted to at parties because I knew, but really knew that I could eat more later if I felt like it. I stopped finishing all my chips if I wasn’t in the mood for chips, because I knew, I mean really knew that I could have more chips if ever I wanted to. I mean, it is amazingly freeing to stop obsessing about food. You of the long time dieters know how much brain energy goes into thinking about food. Imagine my relief.

You know which countries don’t have more depressed woman than men? The countries where women don’t diet.

But! You say, I don’t want to gain 25 pounds and have my arteries clogged with hot pockets! I know, I know, me neither. But I was even more sick of dieting or even being hyper alert about eating “healthy.” I made a full committment to never diet again whatever the results, and the results were not leading to many health goals at first, but strangely, I think this process of following my desires has now led me on a journey of having health and energy. Tune in tomorrow for the super secret of my success. Wait, that sounds too cheeky. Tune in tomorrow for the super secrets of my ordinary life of being fairly healthy and freeing up my brain to think about whatever I want to think about!

• Is focused on being effective.
• Knows what I do, what I like to do, what my goals are.
• Lets me own my job.
• Praises me when I take initiative.
• Encourages me to take on projects that advance our goals at work and that also advance my career goals and are in my areas of interest.
• Knows what’s going on overall at work and has a vision.
• Is very smart. I learn a lot from him.
• Is willing and eager to learn from me.
• Keeps our group informed about what is going in our wider organization and gives us the big picture about how we fit in.
• Treats us like we are strategic partners and listens to our ideas, and lets us run with the ones that we have made a good case for.
• Believes that people are capable, and interested in achieving their own goals.
• Knows how to help people achieve their goals while achieving organizational goals.
• The way he treats us is motivating.
• If I had my own company, I would hire him.

Bad Boss

• Is focused on feeling important.
• Doesn’t know what I do, or care what I want.
• Tries to own the people beneath him and their job.
• Micro-manges to the point of absurdity.
• Gets angry if people do something without asking him first.
• Yet is not helpful and does not know what is going on.
• Is not willing to learn from employees, sometimes not allowing them to talk.
• If I had my own company, I would fire him.
• Believes that people are bad and that if you don’t keep a tight reign on them, they will try to get away with stuff.
• When he talks to me, I want to quit.
• If owned the company, I would fire him.

This post references this post about bosses.
(Note: I went with all male pronouns for convenience.)

There is another person who works here who is not my boss but is about at my boss’s level. She was the boss of the person, who quit abruptly, who used to be in my position. I learned this slowly over time and it made sense of the previously puzzling decision to place me in the department I am in. She micro-manages the people under her to the hilt. In fact, they are required to cc her on every work email they send out. Interestingly though, she seems to have no idea about what is actually going on or about what her people do.

I’m mostly in a different area than her, thank goodness, but I’ve been given a talking to twice by her. Today I was prepared, but last time she literally didn’t let me speak and I had to close the door after she left and cry (just a little) in frustration. It made me want to quit. Today I was given a talking to for handling a confusing situation well. She told me that in the future, I should ask her or someone else in authority what to do. This highlighted the contrast between her and my boss so well. If I took the whole story to him right now, he would be impressed at my initiative and problem solving skills and tell me to keep up the good work. She is just mad that she wasn’t kept in the loop, I suppose.

I could make this whole post a bullet point list about good and bad bosses. In this case I think it comes down to:

Good boss

• Wants to give his team power.

Bad boss

• Wants to take power away.

pss: If anyone from my work ever sees this, I’m talking about a different job.
pss: I think I will make a list.