Begin with the End in Mind

Begin with the end in mind. I have been revisiting a number of books that made a deep impact on my life. Right now I am working through Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. I was caught off guard by an exercise at the beginning of Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind. Although I could paraphrase the exercise, I am going to quote the whole thing here. I am making a personal commitment to take my journal (one of those black and white hard cover school notebooks) to a quiet place and work through this. Here goes...

"Please find a place to read these next few pages where you can be alone and uninterrupted. Clear your mind of everything except what you will read and what I will invite you to do. Don't worry about your schedule, your business, your family, or your friends. Just focus with me and really open your mind.

In your mind's eye, see yourself going to the funeral of a loved one. Picture yourself driving to the funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out. As you walk inside the building you notice the flowers, the soft organ music. You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way. You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there.

As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face to face with yourself. This is your funeral, three years from today. All these pepole have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life.

As you take a seat and wait for the service to begin, you look at the program in your hand. There are four speakers. The first is from your family, immediate and extended-children, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents who have come from all over the country to attend. The second speaker is one of your friends, someone who can give a sense of what you were as a person. The third speaker is from your work or profession. And the fourth is from your church or some community organization where you've been involved in service.

Now think deeply. What would you like each of these speakers to say about you and your life? What kind of husband, wife, father, or mother would you like their words to reflect? What kind of son or daughter or cousin? What kind of friend? What kind of working associate?

What character would you like them to have seen in your? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you. What difference would you like to have made in their lives?"

Am I looking forward to this exercise? Of course not! Will I do it? Yes!

Awareness

Money. Time. Food. The first two seem to slip away and we don't know where they have gone. The third seems to slip in unnoticed and end up on our tummies, hips and thighs. When I was in a class for new home buyers, we had to keep a journal of every penny we spent. The very act of having to write it down made me think twice about every purchase.

When I am on Weight Watchers, I have a little calculator that tracks the point value of everything I eat. If I have to enter 13 points for a single serving frozen pizza when I only have 29 points for the day, I will seriously think about whether it is worth the points.

Those of you who know me, also know that I work a lot. I also do a lot of my work from home. I recently started tracking how I use my time. I made a little spread sheet in Excel with 15 minute increments. After a week of time tracking, I was amazed at how much I do and also about how I "zone out" for periods of time where I honestly don't remember what I was doing!

Tracking things like spending, eating, and time use makes us aware of what is really going on in our lives. Tracking raises awareness. Awareness is the beginning of change. Once we take a look at what we really are doing, we can decide what we want to change in our lives.

For the most part, I am vegetarian. Although every now and then bacon gets me to fall off the wagon! I also love my slow cooker. I turn it on in the morning and come home to dinner. But all my recipes hinged on meat. Browsing the cookbooks in my public library, I discoverd several slow cooker books for vegetarians and vegans.

I made this very yummy recipe from The Vegan Slow Cooker by Kathy Hester:

Tempeh Braised with Figs and Port Wine
2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
1 small onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 package (8 ounces or 25 g) tempeh* cubed
8 fresh figs (may substitute dried figs)
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon (15 ml) balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon (6 g) vegan chicken flavored bouillon
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat and saute the onion until translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute one minute longer. Combine all ingredients in the slow cooker. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.

Yield 4 servings.

*Tempeh is a soy product and a good source of protein. In this recipe, it totally absorbs the all the flavors. The texture is more "toothsome" than tofu. I am not overly fond of tofu, but I love tempeh. You can find it in the refrigerated section with other meat substitutes at health food stores or in the organic part of the produce section of some grocery stores like Publix.

Happy eating!

I Choose

This is the newest post to the pantry door which is becoming "Life Central" for me.

What SHOULD you do? What do you HAVE to do?

What do you choose to do? What is your choice right this minute?

Mortality

Last Tuesday, I spoke to a cancer support group. It was difficult for me to do. I spent a great deal of time preparing. Talking about our own mortality is difficult. Those of us who can do that have learned to truly embrace the present moment and all the good things life has to offer.

As I looked around the room, my mind went back to a dinner about a year ago. The dinner guests included lupus researcher, a top rheumatologist, and potential donors. During the meal they naturally talked about lupus. When it came to mortality from lupus, I spoke up saying, "It's really hard for those of us with lupus to hear you talk about mortality statistics." And it was. And it is.

One of my fellow teachers has a husband with severe lupus. On Wednesday of this past week, he died from complications of lupus, leaving behind a wife and two young children. Camilo Molina, rest in peace and my light perpetual shine upon you.

My Insurance Company: The Pill Police

I thought I was over it. I thought I was over dealing with gross stupidity and annoyance when it comes to my medical care. I was wrong!

I went on line today to order a refill for my Cellcept, the wonder drug that suppresses my immune system and allows me to keep my kidneys. I entered all the information and clicked "check out" and then...I got a message that the order could not be processed and that I needed to call customer service. Sigh. I tried again on line and then surrendered and called.

When I calmly and sweetly (yes I really did that) mentioned that the new website would not let me order on line and that perhaps, in the interest of customer service, they might want to check out the website issue the order taker MADE UP a stupid answer. "Well, Ma'am some medication, well you have to call you know. I don't know why, but it happens." I took a deep breath and said, "I have been doing this on line for years. And you are guessing that it all of a sudden changed?" We went on with the transaction. She was slow as molasses and mumbled like she had a mouth full of marbles.

And then...then came the questions from the order taker turned pill police. "Do you ever forget to take your medication? Do you take two pills a day every day?" Any time I need to call this pharmacy, which, by the way is owned by United Health Care, they ask the pill police questions. Once I said, "Excuse me, are you the pill police?" Another time I asked,"And where did you get your medical degree?" Yes, I know it is their job, but I find it intrusive.

Some kind of old anger surfaced today when the mumble mouthed, order taking, answer faking pill police started the questions. I said, "Look here, I give lectures on these medications. I am the program director for the Lupus Foundation of Florida. This is a discussion I will have with my doctor but not with you." To her credit she said, "Ma'am you can just say you don't want to answer the questions." I said, "Fine, I donl't want to answer the questions so please don't ask any more."

What troubles me here is that I thought I was well over the anger of my encounters with all things medical. I trust and respect my rheumy. I am glad labs exist. I give thanks several times a day for my medications. But today, out of the blue, an old batch of anger surfaced. I felt all the sensations of anger and defensiveness in my body.

This afternoon, I sat for meditation. The pill police incident was nowhere in my conscious my thoughts. Tonight I realize that my anger was not the anger of having a chronic illness like lupus. My anger was about the system that controls our care, patronizes us, and treats us as less than human.

The Pantry Door

I forget things, probably because I always have lots of projects and ideas buzzing around inside my head all the time. I have tried lists. I have tried breaking projects down to specific tasks and putting each task on a note card. I have tried sticky notes. I have tried notebooks. All of these things have helped, but I still end up with that constant background noise of unfinished projects draining my energy.

Recently I read a book about mind mapping. Honestly, the book was horribly written. I decided to try the concept anyway. I sat down with paper and colored Sharpies and quickly made a bunch of mind maps for different projects. Of course, I ended up with a pile of mind maps! Last week, I made a mind map for the week. There were lots of things on the map. As I looked at it, I thought, "You are nuts. You are never going to get through all this stuff this week! You are setting yourself up for failure."

I posted the mind map at eye level on the pantry door, a place that I pass at least a gazillion times a day. Much to my surprise, by the end of the week everything was done. Instead of being immobilized because I could not figure out which thing to tackle next, I just looked at the map and picked one thing. My week was peaceful and productive. I could get into this!

This is a picture of my mind map for this week.