My pants tell the story of how I got fat

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I recently hit the 200 lb mark after losing 25 lbs.  One of the great aspects of losing weight is trying on the clothes that haven’t fit for a long time to see if the weight loss has had an effect. Yesterday I rifled through my jeans and pulled out a pair with a size 34 waist.  I tentatively put them on and, with just a tad extra effort, was able to zip them up and button with no problems.  Success!  I went down stairs to tell Candace about it and as I was talking I stuck my hand in the pocket and found an old receipt.  I opened it to check out the date so I would know the last time I was able to fit into the pants.  The date was 10/12/2008.  A year and a half since I had to trade them in for a bigger pair.

I then looked over the receipt again and noticed it was from Kroger, a local grocery store.  Hmmm, what was the last thing I purchased at the store the last time I was able to fit into these pants?  Here’s the list (receipt shown below):

• 1 pack of peanut butter Oreos
• 1 pack of regular Oreos
• 1 box of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls
• 1 box of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes
• 1 Tombstone Pizza
• 1 pack of Tombstone garlic bread

I think that gives a small glimpse into how I became 50 lbs overweight.

Pros and Cons of buying an iPhone

I’ve been considering the purchase of an iPhone since version one.  Even when Candace was thinking of buying me one, I told her to wait because I wasn’t decided.

Now that our AT&T contract is coming due soon, it’s time to make a final decision.  So in the spirit of doing something cliche, I’m going to make a pros and cons list.

I tried to be brutally honest with myself, so some of them are beyond lame.

I’m obviously leaning towards not buying the iPhone but I need your help.  What would you add to either list?

Reduce Stress by Separating Effort from Earning

In a recent TED talk entitled A different way to think about creative genius, Elizabeth Gilbert “shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person ‘being’ a genius, all of us ‘have’ a genius.”

Back before the Renaissance, all of the great artists and thinkers were believed to have some sort of spirit that helped give them insight:

If your work was brilliant, couldn’t take all the credit for it. [...] If your work bombed, not entirely your fault.

This rings true with a recent personal struggle I’ve had of seperating the outcome of my work from the actual work itself.

Separating effort from earning.

Think through a few scenarios where assuming we’ve earned something causes problems:

• I’ve been at this company for 15 years, I deserved that promotion
• I’ve been schlepping at meaningless jobs for years trying to be an artist.  I’ve paid my dues.
• Why is that guy getting clients over me? I’m better than he is!

I’m sure you can come up with a few more.

However, if you begin to realize that your effort is far from the only thing that effects the outcome, the stress begins to melt away.  You’re relieved of a large portion of the responsibility and can therefore easily move on with the rest of your life.

You put in the effort but you don’t earn anything.

But you’re also not completely off the hook.

When I think of “effort” I think of the work you put into pushing an incredibily large boulder up a hill.

Kind of mindless.

However the definition of “effort” from dictionary.com is:

exertion of physical or mental power

The mental power here is what I want to focus on.

Your effort needs to be thought through, studied, focused and so on.  Merely pushing really hard against a brick wall isn’t good enough.

The kind of effort you put in matters.

My opinion seems to land on a kind of threshhold.  You have to put in the right kind of effort that will get you to a certain threshold of success and then from there it is no longer your responsibility.

Maybe the book you wrote was just as well researched and written, however it collects dust without ever getting a publishing deal.

Could be your ‘genius’ bombed.

My encouragement would be to do the sorts of things that will allow your ‘genius’ to act.  Put effort into becoming a conduit so when your creativity shows up, you’re ready to act instead of wasting all of your time watching TV.

Put the effort in, then detach yourself from the outcome.  You’ll live a longer more fulfilling life.