Dare to Self Improve

I’ve been a culprit of starting projects and then never putting in the time to properly finish them or fully committ to them. This year I’ve tried to change my ways. For the most part, I’d say I’ve made a huge improvement, though I’m certainly not quite where I want to be.

I used to always start projects, then somewhere along the way, get tired of the work and leave them unfinished. Some of the projects I’ve embarked on this year is freelance writing, writing and selling an ebook, playing music in front of people, Relay For Life, and song writing. I will admit that I haven’t committed as strongly as I should for all of these projects, but they are still alive and I AM working (albeit sparingly for some) towards an end goal in sight. I’ll dissect more tomorrow.

We all have friends that happen to fall into two sort of categories. THose who come through, and those who flake. I don’t know about you, but I get REALLY annoyed by my flakey friends. I know they don’t do it on purpose, but being a flake makes it hard to REALLY be good friends with that person.

Coming through and being dependable is also great for your reputation among people who don’t know you personally as well, such as work colleagues etc. When you bring the goods to the table, people automatcially begin respecting you more and trusting you more.

Make it a point to really follow through with things you commit to. I’ve been spread pretty thin this year, but I’ve tried to commit to the same goal. More on this tomorrow.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was going to attempt to mitigate some of my holiday eating damage by making some smart substitutions and sacrifices in some areas, while still allowing myself some holiday treats.

Yesterday was a perfect example. Allow me to outline.

Extra Holiday Treats: Healthy piece of Pecan Pie, Apple Cobbler, small cookie.
Sacrifices: Eliminated cracker snacks, extra 300 Calories of Cardio, avoided ordering a beer when meeting up with friends.

Overall, I probably came out close to even! Its all about balance this holiday season!

Uh Oh…it’s the Holidays again.

When it comes to Holiday eating, I’m just like everyone else. In the month of December, I consume more calories than during any other month of the year. Actually, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners aren’t such a big deal. It’s when people bring cookies and chocolate to work everyday, and friends have Holiday party’s with lots of treats that get me.

I have a major sweet tooth.

This year, to combat the Holiday eating, I’m going to try and make substitutions. Today, I had a slice of Pecan Pie in the morning (AFTER I ate breakfast). So now, I’m going to eliminate my afternoon cracker snack (doesn’t really even out, I know) AND do an extra ten minutes of cardio to combat this. I’ll let you know how this goes!

Celery is great for those of us who like to eat. I don’t know about you, but enjoy a nice hearty dinner. Typically, you want to taper you meals throughout the day, but at dinner time, when we also happen to be least active, most of us end up eating our biggest meal.

BUT, we can combate the health side effects of this by incorporating celery. Why?

1. Celery is extremely high fiber which means its very filling,
2. The high fiber content and unique sugar chemistry means the body expends more calories digesting celery than it absorbs from the celery.

No, eating celery is no substitute for exercise, but getting ZERO calories from a food that fills you up is a great start!

As you know, I love talking about health, fitness, and diet. I’m a big advocate of eating a 90% healthy diet. Part of my healthy diet includes a LOT of celery.

Why do I like celery so much? Well, to tell the truth, I don’t actually care for it too muck when eaten just plain. That being said, I love using when cooking anything where vegetables are used.

Celery is great at absorbing ambient flavors while not contributing too much of its own (thank god). For example, I chop celery and use it in my soups, stir fries, and salads. I even put two stalks of celery in my daily morning smoothy.

So from a health perspective, what’s so great about celery? Stay tuned.

Last week I mentioned that I was participating in my first open mic ever!

Welp, it went great! I’ve had tons of people come up to me and tell me how much they enjoyed my performance, and I’m STILL getting positive emails! I was REALLY nervous, but I managed to get through without making too many mistakes and apparently it sounded pretty good.

It was so fun that I’ve been reinspired to start writing more music. In fact, a friend of mine runs an open mic in Downtown San Diego that he’s invited me to perform at today! I think I’m going to do it!

Like I said before, good things always happen when you leave your comfort zone.

The thing you is, you can’t just say you’re over it. You have to be over it. I could have very easily been pissed about what happened after our silly text exchange. But instead I chose to forgive what happened and let it go. There’s no point in holding a grudge. I still think ditching me while I was getting HER the car was totally inconsiderate, but it’s over, she’s not a bad person, and I don’t think she ment to piss me off.

That’s not to say I won’t do things differently. I won’t be susceptable to being walked all over. I’ll treat her the same, but she definitely has a “mark on her record” and I won’t be so willing to be so nice in a similar situation in the future.

So where are we now? The art of forgiveness is great! Yesterday, she cooked me dinner! For about five minutes the other night, I was resolved to never talk to her again (when I was upset), but look what coming to my senses did for me! A free dinner and some lovin!

I don’t really get angry too often. I WAS pretty damn pissed off though. In fact, I haven’t been this pissed in awhile. Before cooling down, I sent her a couple of pretty strong text messages. BUT, I never like to attack people directly. There’s no point in being overtly hurtful and I never want to sink to that level…even when I’m pissed. Our exchange was as follows.

Me: “Thanks for waiting for me while I fetched the car for you! You’re SOOOO considerate!”
Her: “we waited like 20 mins, it was cold, i’m sorry”
Me: “Welp, I guess I’m just a tool for jogging my ass off to the car thinking you’re cold, and showing up at an empty corner. Jokes on me!”
Her: “Call me when you decide to not be cruel. I was cold. Alyssa wanted to go. Ur being mean”
Me: “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t run fast enough. I thought you’d wait. Whatever. I’m over it. Being pissed is a waste of energy.”

It’s pretty obvious from this exchange that I was not too pleased, but notice I never directly attacked her, but she definitely got the point.

Tomorrow, I’m going to talk about getting over it, and moving on…what happened next!

Its ironic that I wrote a post about letting go of the small stuff on Friday, because later on, on Friday night, I was pretty pissed off for about 15 minutes. The quick story:

After hanging out with some friends along with a girl I’ve been seeing on Friday night at a downtown bar/club, me, her, and one of her friends were outside. We were going to get a cab, but it was late, her friend was busy talking to some guy, so we were more or less standing around in the relative cold doing nothing.

Me: “Well, should I just go and get my care (about 8 blocks away) and come by and pick you guys up?”
Her: “Yea, I think we’re gonna have to do that”

So I jog back to my car (because she was cold) 8 blocks away, and drive all the way back to pick them up.

Surprise! They’re gone. They got in a cab and left.

Suffice to say, I was PISSED! Really pissed.

So how did I wrangle my emotions?