'Humility' ... for years I would hear this word, and for years, I didn't really know what it meant, and I probably still don't know the full extent of it's power and importance. I would often hear the expression "now you're eating humble pie" and so I hazarded a guess that it meant that ' I was doing something that I thought to be right, and then I was proven wrong'. In a way, maybe that could be an indication of the meaning. The English dictionary says ... ... 'hu·mil·i·ty ... noun the quality or condition of being 'humble'; modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance, rank, etc. ' ... I'm better/worse than nobody ... and nobody is better/worse than me.
Another way of looking at Humility is to say "We look at ourselves Truthfully, warts and all ". Humility is feeling and taking responsibility for ALL your emotions. You see, when we talk about 'looking' at ourselves, we tend to only want to see the 'good' bits right ? ...IT IS actually loving to acknowledge the good bits of our selves, HOWEVER... if we desire to 'continually grow' and become a better person, or become even more loving then we currently are, THEN ....we must also be humble enough to look at the 'Bad' bits about ourselves too.
When I say the 'Bad' bits, I mean the parts of us that are not 'Loving'. There are many examples of this, and the degree of being unloving vary greatly from person to person. For one person, being unloving may mean that they murder an other person, definitely not a loving act. To another person, being unloving may mean that they 'beat themselves up' and tell themselves that they are 'no good'. Both examples are unloving ... but in Who's eyes ??? May I suggest ...In the eyes of God, the Creator !
In the eyes of God we were ALL created in a 'pristine' condition of Love. And when God created us, all she desired was that we would Love ourselves as much as our creator herself Loves us, which is unconditional. This is when I think, 'If God created the the moon and the stars that are so awe-inspiring ... is it possible ... just possible, that I cannot at this stage of my life comprehend how much Love God has for me. If this is true, and... at this moment in time, I do not 'Love myself' with the exact same intensity as how God Loves me, then it is logically safe to say, that I am falling way short of the life that I was DESIGNED TO LIVE. And what happens when we start to live a life that we were not designed to live ?... Well, sometimes I may feel like I just want to go out and kill someone ... or, at other times, I may feel like beating myself up so badly that I become depressed, and worse, maybe I desire to kill myself... Would a Creator of something, create it in order for it to be destroyed ??? Would You create something with love, care and patience, and then want it to be destroyed ??? I don't think so ... but we do it others and ourselves all of the time !
So how do we stop these destructive cycles ? By being Truthful and Humble, looking at ourselves, warts and all. We can only heal the bad (damaged) parts of ourselves when we Truthfully look at what it is that is damaged. If not, It would be like trying to fix a punctured inner tube on a bicycle without taking off the tyre to see where it has been punctured. When the hole has been found in the inner tube, then we can fix it. When we are humble enough to see where we are being unloving in our lives, then ...we can fix it !
The trouble is, like the wheel, we go about our lives wearing a 'tyre' to protect our 'inner tube'. Scared to death that we will get punctured ! Sometimes we are so scared about being punctured, that we wear and build extra tyres around us to ensure that nothing gets through to damage our precious inner tube. Some tyres are now actually manufactured to be a puncture proof, and that's what we do. We let nothing in.
It's good to be protected right ? Well yes ... and no. The trouble in this scenario, is that God designed us to be able to show and express to the world our unique 'inner tube', because we all have different one. And now, because of the fear of being hurt, we have enclosed ourselves with many layers of black, hard, rubber tyres, and nobody can see who we Truly are ... and that's a shame, because underneath all those layers is a ... 'Pristine' inner tube.
So ... if there is a God ... and, if God did create us ... and, if God does indeed Love us more than we can ever imagine ... and, if God does indeed desire us to realize that we can Love ourselves to same intensity as she does ... Then we must be humble to feel all of our emotions ... We must be humble enough to hear the critic that talks to us and says 'we are not good enough' ... We must be humble enough to feel all the bad bits about ourself ... and we must be humble and brave enough to remove all of the hard tyres, and then expose ourselves with transparency. Show to the world our precious, thin, soft, flexible and expandable inner tube ... called Your Soul.
But how do I know when I am not being humble ? Well, do you ever get angry ? even a smidgen ? slight frustration ? grumpy ? judgemental ? Well, these are the signs that we are not being humble. In times like this, we must STOP what we are doing, then feel how we feel, (which could be anger or self judgement) ... and then ask ourselves "What is it inside of ME that is feeling angry about this situation" ... We have a tendency to straight away BLAME the other for making us angry, and this mi amigo is not being humble. If we carry on blaming others for how WE feel, then we will never grow and heal. Being humble always asks the question, " what is it inside of me, that created this ..." When we are truly humble, and have processed all of our unloving emotions within us, there will come a point in our life, when we will never ever become angry about anything ever again. At this point, we will love ourselves with the same intensity as God loves us. And at this point, we will Love everybody, and everything in the universe, with the same intensity as we love ourselves. Now wouldn't that be a great place to live.
When we can be Truly Humble ... then we can Truly Heal ... How Humble and True are you ? How willing are you to bare your strong side along with all of your warts to the world ? ( I will write in the future how we can process unloving emotions)
I love this clip from the film 'Phone booth'. It shows exactly what I mean about being humble. Enjoy. Remember, you can run ... but you can't hide ...for ever at least.
When I first switched my diet to the 80/10/10 I found this website extremely helpful, it is called www.cronometer.comThe 80/10/10 diet focuses on 80% carbohydrates 10% Fat 10% protein. The cronomter works by you entering all your daily food intake. When all the info has been inputted, it automatically calculates all of the percentages that have been eaten.
It is really beautifully done with graphs,pie charts and goal settings. On the 80.10.10 diet, the aim is normally to eat at least 3000 calories a day.
I know some people who eat around 6000 calories a day, based on a raw vegan plant based diet. Often people associate calories with weight gain, but in my experience on the 80.10.10 diet, this is not true. It seems the calories derived from plant based foods are used for pure energy and nutrition, and no excess weight is gained. my weight is 75kg at present, and it very rarely fluctuates. I am 5'11" in height. I exercise regular in the woods, to keep toned.
It is important on a raw vegan diet to keep the calories high or you may start to feel tired. This is were a lot people go wrong when switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet. They simply don't eat enough.
A typical day for me is to eat 3 meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Breakfast= 10 bananas and 10 dates smoothie = around 1200 calories Lunch = 4 Mangoes, 6 oranges, glass of fresh orange juice = around 800 calories Evening = Huge green salad, bunch of grapes,10 kiwis = around 1000
I also try to drink at least 3 litres of water a day. 1 litre gets washed down as soon as I wake up.
I always try be in bed by 10pm at the latest. When I go to bed at 9pm I wake up the next day feeling so rested. I normally wake up around 6am or 7am. I like to get at least 8 hours sleep. Since I worked in the Bar industry for all those years, I never got the benefits of an early night. I totally feel the difference when I get my early nights in now, I become much more productive the next day. Never underestimate the power of sleep.
Now that I have got my routine down, and I roughly know how many calories are in which foods, I do tend not to use the cronometer as much. I found it so vital in the beginning, because I could really keep track of my intake, and make sure I was eating enough food to sustain my body and mind for each day. I dip into the cronometer now and again just to see how my stats are doing. Check it out http://www.cronometer.com/ ... If you need any help, then just e -mail me. and remember ... Fruits your friend, eat as much as you like.
Can you believe that I never read a single book of my own accord until I was 21 years old. Sure, I read text books at school and stuff, but I mean, that until I was 21, I had never ever dreamed of thinking 'hmm, I think today I will choose a book to read'. I didn't even read news papers. And then one day, my flat mate said "Perry, I think you might like this book". She was right, I did like it, and I couldn't put it down. The book was that classic title 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Cohelo. It totally reflected my own situation back then, and it felt like the author had writing this book especially for me. Such a capturing story, from such a creative, poetic author. I remember thinking when thrashing through pages 'I can't believe books can be so engaging'. I had only been used to study books at school, and so I assumed that all books were 'boring', which to no surprise was the same feeling I had about school and learning.
So now, I zip forward 12 years, and I can't even estimate how many books I have read. I remember at one point I was reading 2 books a week, which by my standards was very impressive.
I now love books, and feel they all offer a gift and reveal insights to myself. Often, It happens that I need to make a decision about a certain something, and then, as if by magic, an answer which inspires me will seemingly pop out of the pages from the book that I am 'randomly' reading. This for me shows how our souls are constantly sending out 'messages' or 'prayers' to God and the Universe. The answers then come to us in 'mysterious' ways. Although, when we understand the power of prayer and intention, its then not so mysterious, but in fact magnificent and awe striking. The snag is, we are not always open to receive Gods gifts. We are actually receiving gifts constantly and we are normally throwing away Gods gifts constantly.
The reason for this is that we generally do not recognise what a gift from God is. I used to think of gifts as 'things' I wanted to have. So, I would pray 'Please God, send me some money' 'Please God, send me my perfect partner' 'please God, send me a Bentley sports car' 'Please God, send me a beach house' 'Please God, take this illness away' 'Please God, send me, send me, send me ...' I often felt like my prayers were not answered ... I would be sad, my bottom lip would turn, and It would confirm to me that there is no God.BUT ... What I failed to miss were the constant gifts that were being sent and giving to me. If God could speak he/she would of have been replying something like this 'Here you go Perry, that feeling you have about your passion to write, DO IT. 'Hey Perry, that feeling you have to exercise everyday, DO IT' 'Hey perry, that feeling you had to help that person 'DO IT' 'Hi Perry, that feeling you have to 'forgive' yourself 'DO IT' 'Perry, its me again, that feeling you have to talk to that guy over there 'DO IT' (he owns a Bentley and is giving it away because he has got so many) ' Hello Perry, are you giving thanks for that fresh organic fruit you are eating. if not 'DO IT' ' Perry,That man who just pushed in front of you, how did it make you FEEL ?,' Perry,that women who just got angry with you, how did it make you FEEL ?' OK, so I hope you are catching me drift here... Firstly, 'God speaks to us about our gifts by OUR FEELINGS', and Secondly 'We must ACT ON THOSE FEELINGS appropriately to fully receive the gift being sent.
You see, I feel the greatest gift from God is the GIFT OF FREE WILL ... we get the choice to CHOOSE ! I believe when you act on your feelings, that's when you can fully engage in the gift of life, and receive all its glory. How many times have you gone against your feelings to act
and then afterwards felt the pain of not acting ? you just threw away a gift. By not acting on your feelings, you throw away the chance to make YOUR contribution to the world, which could make a huge difference for the better (or worse, depending how you choose to use your free will )
So, my message today is clearly ... ACT on your loving feelings. If you are too scared to act for any reason, then ACT and face that fear, for it will forever hold you back.
OK, back to books, I'm reading this book now called ' DO IT or DITCH IT ' by Bev James. I'm finding it really useful in helping me with my powers to ACT, turning my passions into my reality. So I just wanted to share it with you all.
Wow .. I've just signed up for this 5.5 mile assault course on April the 1st, I'm not fooling around here !
Just learnt a new a catch phrase today, thanks to the coaching academy, which I'm loving ... it goes like this ' I'm being stretched '. I will be saying it now every time that I find myself out of my 'comfort zone'. When I jump into my stretch zone, then for me that means I'm growing on all levels of my being, which is how I always want to be. Who wants to stagnate and rot ? not me! I think I will definitely be getting stretched after this ... Can't Wait !
