Taking a Turn for the Best

Because we’re human we get tempted by foods (and other things) that we know aren’t especially good for us. It’s just not fair that foods that aren’t good for us, taste so darn good!

Been on the SES Diet lately (Summer Eating Spree Diet)? You know, too much potato salad and too many corn on the cobs, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato chips, s’mores, sodas, beers, cupcakes and crackers and more. They’re all the treats of summer picnics, camping and barbecues and we associate these fun times with those fun foods. And you probably have it in your mind that those times without those treats just wouldn’t be fun.

Usually we get back on track because there’s something in the future, compelling us. Maybe it’s a health problem and your doctor says you need dump the doughnuts and hit the gym or you’ll drop dead pretty soon. Or, maybe it’s just a wedding approaching and you’re one of the bride’s maids and you don’t want to be the fattest one. Or, maybe you’re planning a vacation and you want to have energy to walk a lot. The decision is the first part of the turn and then you have to have the motivation to make the turn and that’s where a compelling reason kicks in.

Maybe it’s time to go into your imagination booth (by closing your eyes) and use your imagination to get back on the right track. You can take me with you, using these 4 suggestions.

If you love Mexican food, but instantly think about all the carbs in most of it, you can un-carb any high carb dish, with minor replacements. 

Watch this video from my kitchen as I prepare burritos that'll take you right over the border in a low-carb way.

Olah! Oh, by the way, if you are serious about living a low carb lifestyle, I recommend Gary Taubes' book "Why We Get Fat and What We Can do About it." It was this science writer for the New York Times that completely change my husband Terry's and my life. Subsequently I took two years to write The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! Documenting my switch to a happy, healthy way to eat. Just click on the cover to learn more.

Love,

Pam 

 My Aunt Tottie was extremely disorganized and she was also very dramatic! My mother was a BO (Born Organized) and she used to roll her eyes over the way Aunt Tottie lived.

For instance, she was a lousy housekeeper, wore baggy clothes day in and day out, and rarely put on make-up, BUT when she did get cleaned up, she was a KNOCK OUT. Mom said when they were young; Aunt Tottie would get all gussied up to go out dancing and she’d make an entrance that would drop jaws.

One time when she and my mom were teenagers, hanging out at Aunt Totties', the future Uncle John dropped by unexpectedly and Aunt Tottie was still in her nightgown (it was five in the evening). Her hair hadn't been washed so it was greasy and she raced to her room so Uncle John wouldn't see her. Ten minutes later she came down the stairs in a cute summer dress and she'd wrapped a colorful silk scarf on her head like a turban. Mom said she looked just like Lauren Bacall. (Oh, and Uncle John looked just like Henry Fonda.)

My aunt loved to get a reaction from BOs like my mom. I remember one time; watching her in her messy kitchen, make orange juice from a can of frozen concentrate while she talked with my mom. She couldn’t find a clean spoon to stir the three cans of water into the orange lump of concentrate, so she just stuck her whole hand into the pitcher and stirred with it. My mother was horrified.

 Set your intention to be happy regardless of your circumstances.

Maybe the guy who invented the thermostat got the idea from his own emotional meter. Instead of temperatures imagine words on a meter with emotions like miserable, overwhelmed, worried, desperate, optimistic, hopeful, happy, and blissful. 

When you think about the happy people you know, does one of the attributes, they seem to have in common, a wonderful outlook on life. Happy people seem to have an emotional meter that’s programmed for joy and contentment no matter what happens to them. Unfortunately many of us have meters set on negative emotions, but we can always reprogram them for happy by deciding to practice being joyful regardless of the forces outside of us. What’s interesting about setting an intention of being happy all the time, is when something pulls you from that place you know it and you can kick in and put yourself back on happy. Abraham Lincoln said: “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Is your meter properly adjusted?

In our writing career we spoke to thousands of groups and rarely did we have men in our audiences. We even thought about having a seminar just for men, but most wondered if we could have a television there with "the game" on in the background or better yet, throw the workshop from a tavern or sports bar. Of course we never were able to pull off a How to Organize Your Home exclusively for men. Here we are on television with Gary Collins talking about how to get husbands to help. 

Are you disorganized?

Have you read a bunch of get organized books in the hopes of cleaning up your act, but you’re still in a mess? According to Amazon, there are 4,939 titles in print on the subject and not one result matched for “using your imagination to get organized.” You probably already know being organized is simply about routines and habits, so if you’re disorganized, you just haven’t found the motivation to do it. 

If you are disorganized you know it affects every area of your life: your health and fitness, appearance, finances, relationships and even your spiritual life. By getting a handle on organization you’ll be able to improve in all areas of your life. All you need are a few scenarios to jump start your imagination and help you put entertainment and drama into your otherwise humdrum, boring, uneventful or maybe even sad life, by turning mundane tasks into high adventures . . . until they become automatic habits.

Getting organized is more about MIND management then it is about TIME management. Our minds are the key to our success in getting and staying organized. William James, a famous philosopher said: “Things are not as they are, but as we are.” Our job then is to approach our problem with a new way to see our situation. Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” So let’s start using our fabulous imaginations to put a new spin on our circumstances and get organized just for the fun of it.

When you were little, did you try to get answers from daisies like, “he loves me, he loves me not?” Maiming daisies for answers seems a little cruel but there is another way. Have you ever asked a question and gone to a random book, on a random page for the answer? If you've never done it you don't know what  you're missing. 

Right now, I’m waiting to hear whether my project is going forward or not. My patience is being tested, because I’m excited to know. So I picked up a book, I’ve been currently re-reading entitled, Think and Grow Rich, which I’ve had in my library since 1968. I opened the book randomly, to a page and closed my eyes and pointed to a place on one of the pages. This is what it said: Faith removes limitations! Remember this when you are ready to bargain with Life for whatever it is that you ask as your price for having passed this way. Without telling you what the news is about, I will say that these words fit perfectly (which is almost always what happens when I do this) with what I’m waiting to hear.

Why buy bottled salad dressings when it's so simple to make them in your own kitchen.

It takes more time to choose a bottle and the store and pay for it, as it does to make it. See for yourself in this video from my kitchen.

In a courtroom, if a judge exclaimed, “You’re out of order!” you’d know to shut up, but when your home is out of order, there’s no one to shout at you but the stuff that’s been left out all over the place. When your house is out of order, it causes you to be out of order. Clutter has a voice and it won’t shut up until you deal with it.

Shut the Fuss Up!

There are only two ways to shut the fuss up! Either get rid of it or put it away. If you get rid of it, throw it away or give it away. Why not sell those unwanted items? Simple – because you don’t want to give yourself another task to do! If you give yourself that option, you set yourself up for a garage sale project with a mountain of pricing or a bunch of time spent on craigslist.org, both of which requires a lot of follow-through and dedication to the task.

15 Negative Words to Ignore to Be Happy

So many of you resonated with my blog, (A Daily Routine to Deal with a Cranky Hubby) on living with a critical person, that I thought I should write a little more, since I lived with a very unhappy and critical man for 15 years and received advance studies in the field.

Aristotle said, “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”  Hmmm that sounds fun! Let’s all go into
comas!

The truth is, we women have been dealing with criticism most of our lives and it can effect our self-esteem. We’ve been conditioned to not rock the boat. We want to be liked and throughout history a woman’s life depended on it. Many of us don’t voice our ideas or pursue our most important work because of our fear of criticism. We don’t take risks or speak our truth because we’re afraid of criticism and dependent on praise. But whenever we look outside of ourselves for validation, we’re looking in the wrong place and if we allow anyone to cause us to doubt our ability to succeed, it’s our own fault. That was the main reason I wrote The Joy of Being Disorganized. I wanted women to understand their value in spite of being disorganized. 

Turn a deaf ear to negative words

I decided to look up the negative words our society uses to describe women, especially in the workplace. For example, if a man forgets things easily he’s called an absent minded professor. If a woman is forgetful she’s called a ding bat. Here are the words used to describe women and what I came up with to describe men who exhibit the same characteristics.

Hormonal

Both men and women have hormones, so why don’t we ever hear someone say of a man who has just thrown a temper tantrum, “He’s hormonal.” But it’s commonly used to describe a woman’s outburst and especially in conjunction with PMS (which my sister’s husband thought was an airline). 

She struggles with disorganization. We had time to chat before we went on The Today Show and I share her very funny story in The Joy of Being Disorganized. Katie is just one of many famous people who are disorganized. Notice how serious she is with us, in this interview!

What would you think of a store that catered to SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives)? Of course it’d have to be open 24/7 because we lose track of time and we wouldn’t want to get there and have it be closed. Also, they’d have a cloth shopping bag swap (try to say that fast) so there’d always be a good supply of shopping bags in case you left yours in the car. In the event you remembered, you could bring in several for the good of the SHE. 

This SHE store wouldn’t sell anything shiny or we’d get distracted from what we went in there to buy in the first place, and whatever the store sold, it’d only provide two choices of each product, because we get easily overwhelmed by too many choices.

It’d stock items like diaries that only have 14 pages; just for January, because SHEs never fill out their diaries and they waste all those pages made for the rest of the year. So guilt ensues.

SHEs love to “start” new projects, but in about 14 days most projects lose their juice, so this SHE store would not sell yarn to knit or crochet more than a small hat or a pair of baby’s booties. It would NOT sell patterns for sweaters or enough yarn to produce them.

Do you love your county fair?

Have you been going to the fair since you were a child? If you live outside the city, is there something in the air that tugs at your fair heart strings? What is it that you first think of when you think of the fair? The animals? The Ferris Wheel? The food?

There's a booth at the Clark County Fair in Ridgefield, Washington that's run by the "church ladies." They draw some of the longest lines, because the pies are homemade, fresh daily and delicious! Once you have a piece of the church ladies' pie, the memory stays with you forever! 

I love the Clark County fair and have been going to it since I was nine-years-old when we moved to the country.

Every summer, my parents used the fair as an enticement, with a list of extra chores I could do to make money for the rides, and trying to win stuffed animals and other must-have stuff kids want when they try to toss a poker chip onto a plate and have it stay there.

I don’t do the rides anymore, but I still love to watch others spin, scream, wave and occasionally puke up corn dog mixed with cotton candy.