A Full Moon For Sure!

The strangest things can occur around a full moon. Today a man at the gym watched my husband teach me some Tae Kwon Do. He then proceeded to chat me up and follow me around the gym! My daughter thought it was hilarious. I guess I didn't mention to the guy that the man with the black belt was my husband!

But really, I am a 58 year old woman who is overweight and out of shape. I certainly wasn't dressed to impress! What on earth was he thinking?!!

Some disturbing news came in an e-mail from a friend today. She discovered that she had placed her trust in someone to help her maintain a raw diet and then found out that her coach did not, in fact, follow a raw diet herself. The real upset was that the coach had billed herself as someone who was a raw vegan.

This got me to thinking about how we all look for leaders we can trust. We all want someone else to give us the answers and show us how to be successful. We want someone to show us "the way." And while some people and programs may teach us a lot, we still frequently fail to meet our goals. Just ask me how I know this! I want to plunk down my dollars and have my dream body and my dream life now. And if it can't be now, then what do I need to do to make it happen now?

I can be an impatient person. I can be a very demanding person. I expect excellence from anyone I deem to be my leader. (Obviously I have met with a lot of disappointment in my life.) But all this does point to how we often give up our personal responsibility so that someone else can show us what we need to be doing. The real rub here is that the people we are relying on are just like us! None of us has The Answer for everything. But when we trust someone to show us how to live our lives better, we expect those people to have some integrity in their own lives. We are all too often disappointed by our leaders when we discover they don't.

How many politicians and religous leaders have let us down? Big business hasn't exactly been a model of integrity either. So who can we trust to give us honest, reliable answers? I suggest to you that the answer to that question is this: everyone and no one, except yourself.

I have come to believe that I am the one I must rely on to accomplish my goals. I am the one who needs to educate myself to make the best decisions for me. I need to take the information from as many others as possible and then take the best of that for what solves my problems. But most of all, I need to stop looking to individuals to take me to the promised land. I am responsible for my own life and I am the one who can make the changes I want to see.

This is exactly how I became a 100% raw vegan. I took all the information that others could provide and decided what was best for me. I am the only one who could make this decision. No one else could do this for me.

Some good decisions I made for myself today:
Breakfast: A fantastic green smoothie with 2 bananas, 1 cup each of frozen, organic peaches and blueberries and 4 large Swiss chard leaves.
Lunch: Broccoli, celery and baby carrots with leftover "experimental salad dressing" as a dip.
Supper: Large salad with arugula, baby spinach, tomato, avocado, red bell pepper, pumpkin seeds, shallots and a dressing of agave nectar, mustard, olive oil, lemon and sea salt.