The Horror of the Human Condition

 

We go through the twists and turns of life knowing we can do more, be more, have more and yet we’re disappointed in ourselves, because we haven’t reached our full potential. We know we can be more than we are, but we procrastinate. We don’t do as we ought. We don’t manage our time, our money, or our relationships well.

We berate ourselves, for falling short of what we think we could be. We feel shame and guilt and this causes stress and anxiety. We know we should eat healthy and exercise and yet we don’t do it. We don’t like the way we look and we berate ourselves all the more.  

We don’t like the way we behave either. We can be mean, condescending, and downright brutal at times and we don’t like ourselves for behaving this way.

We also don’t need to stay this way.

We don’t need to change everything today. We just need to take one small step of action.

Changing one thing today, will make us better than we were yesterday and it will give us hope for a better tomorrow. Hope is fundamental to enjoying life. A hopeless life puts us in a downward spiral and that’s no way to live life. To have a joyous life, we need to give ourselves something to hope in and hope for. 

We can start with having less cigarettes (drop one or two today and next week try for more) or eating an apple instead of having that biscuit. Perhaps alcohol or drugs are the issue. Do what it takes, to make one small step today. Is it a phone call, a doctor’s appointment you need? Can you throw out all sugars from your home? Remember; one small step today.

We can start with walking, instead of sitting on the lounge doing nothing, even if all we start with is 5 minutes. We can build from there. And that may be only one small action today, but let’s say we take another action tomorrow and another one and another.

In a year, or two years, or three years, you’re going to be in a much better place and feel better about yourself, but only if you take action and what better time than today? It all starts with you and it starts with one small action.

Don’t try to lose 25 kilos, when that’s never worked for you before. Try to lose 1 kilo and then another and then another. Small actions every day.

And sure, you may not be where you want to be next week, or even in 6 months but you’ll be so much better off than where you are right now, if you take action and keep at it.

You don’t have to change everything today, there just has to be some action. Without action, nothing changes. Even a small action is better than no action.

If you get to a point where you have improved 50% on where you are now, how much better will you feel about yourself?

We all want to manage the world and half of us can’t even manage our own home.

Start with looking after yourself. Start to mend relationships. Start taking care of your finances. Eat healthy, get exercise, tidy your house and move on from there.

Because you can’t change the world until you can change yourself and until you can change yourself, no-one’s going to take you seriously anyway. No one’s going believe in you, if you want to change the world and can’t manage your own depraved behaviour. 

And maybe you don’t want to change the world. You might just want a better life for yourself. It still takes action on your part. So take yourself seriously!

Start with you, then your family, then your home, and then your finances and then you can tackle community. Because you will want to help others, once you’ve seen the positive results you get.

Don’t try to do it all at once, just start with one small step, one step at a time. Change something every day, until it becomes the new normal for you.

Also, stretch yourself past your limits. We feel fear and get stuck in fear. And if we don’t move out of fear, nothing changes and we spiral downhill. One small change is all you need to start with.

So set your goals, but before you set your goals, determine your values. If your values don’t line up with your goals, you will have greater difficulty manifesting those goals. 

If you think you have to work hard to earn money, then you’ll self-sabotage any idea you come up with, for ‘easy’ money. Your values have to line up with your goals. It is possible to work towards your goals and succeed, but you won’t have to work as hard, if your goals line up with your values. 

A core value to you might be that successful people are stingy people and although that’s not necessarily correct, that’s just the way you’ve seen it happen. 

You don’t want to be seen as stingy, so unconsciously (this is not something you’re particularly conscious of doing) you’ll do something to hamper your success (and it could be anything which hampers you), because subconsciously you don’t want to be seen as stingy. You might wonder why it works this way and I can’t tell you this. All I know is; it happens.

Do you know why people don’t make new year’s resolutions? It’s because they’ve never followed through and achieved any new year resolution they’ve made. When you make a resolution and don’t follow through with it, you weaken your muscle memory for next time and eventually you come to the conclusion; “I don’t bother making resolutions. They never work anyway,” and so you don’t try.  

Don’t wait though, for new year. Don’t even wait for Monday. Start today. Start while you have a little motivation happening and go for it. 

So, it’s simple; determine your core values, set your goals, make an action plan, start small and go for it.  

You are free to do as you like.

 

You are free to do as you like!

You’re free to smoke, you’re free to become an alcoholic, you’re free to sell your body. You’re free to do all sorts of negative things. You’re also free to do as you ought. You’re free to say no, to that which isn’t good for you and yes to that which is.

Often God gets the blame when things go wrong, but if we truly stop and ask ourselves how we contributed to where we are, we’ll find we did have free will, to make wrong decisions. Does that mean accidents don’t happen? Of course not. Things go wrong in life. Life’s hard. 

Even the bible states; you will have troubles. Life is hard. People we love get sick and die. Who do you know, ate all the wrong foods and got diabetes? Who do you know, who smoked and now has lung cancer? Who do you know, did all the right things and died anyway? Life doesn’t always give us what we want. But we can help things to a certain degree. We can make good choices and have good outcomes. 

Finances are a similar thing. Are you spending all you have, to impress people you don’t know and who don’t care? Finances are flexible, you just need to learn to manage them, to have them work for you and not against you.

If you’ve started a business and have found finances aren’t quite what you were hoping for when you started, it will help if you have an understanding about money. You might have thought the business would take off and flourish, but you’ve ended up with the opposite. 

You might have even thought, the passion you have in doing what you love was enough. However, I ask you; how much study did you do, before you invested in that business?  Go to the library, if you can’t afford books and borrow books on business and investing. Perhaps there’s a seminar on finances, in your area, that you could attend.

It’s the little things, the boring and mundane things, the things which you think aren’t all that important, that’s going to get you over the line. Things like making a budget, working out the costings of that one item, to ensure you’re selling it at a profit. 

There’s not many of us who like making budgets. Most of us want to stay home and party, but I gotta tell ya; A disciplined self is a self of power. Imagine taking the one thing you hate about yourself and changing it. That’s discipline! And when you do change that one aspect of your life, you feel empowered. That’s an amazing feeling. 

To become unfit and unhealthy takes years of wrong actions. It’s easy to be consistently broke, just keep spending. Or you can take control of your health, your relationships, your finances, or whatever it is, you don’t like about your life. You are free to do as you like.

One moment of carelessness and life can become wrecked. It’s hard to stay committed all the time and it’s easy to say; I’m free to do as I like. However, you do have moral obligations and if you work with those obligations, it will help you turn your life from one of constant troubles and hardship, to one of peace, joy and success.

The choice is yours. There are no moral holidays. You’re not free to drink and drive. Well you are, but the consequences can be quite dire and I wouldn't recommend it. 

If you want a successful life, you need to do what successful people do. Successful people do what the majority don’t want to do. They get up early and focus on their goals. Successful people don’t procrastinate and waste very little time watching tv, playing computer games, or reading trashy magazines. Successful people have plans in place and act on those plans, without excuse. 

There’s plenty of books and you tube messages on the internet, which tell you how you can become a success, so why aren’t we reading and listening to that? Because it takes action. It takes doing what the majority of people won’t do, of doing what’s difficult, even when we don’t feel like doing it. But I put it to you; if you set a goal and constantly work at it, at some point, you will achieve that goal, if you don’t quit.

You can create a vision board, or write a goals list. Write the goal, post a picture, whatever works for your creativity level. Add the steps, which get you there and go for it. Simple. The above photo, of a vision board, or goal setting board is a relatively simple one, as an example only. You can make these boards as elaborate as you like. Have a look on line and you’ll see some really imaginative ones, or as they say: KISS (Keep it simple, smarty).

We’re not born successes. We work at it, one step at a time and we are free to choose, to do as we like, or to do as we ought.

Curry Pork with Cauliflower Rice

 

         Curried Pork and Cauliflower Rice.

            Serves 4. Cooking time varies.

Curried Pork;

3 pork scotch steaks, cut into cubes

1 brown onion, diced small

¼ jap pumpkin cut into cubes

2 tbls red curry paste

I tin coconut cream

1 tblsp soy sauce

Green beans for garnish

Cauliflower rice;

¼ cauliflower, chopped into rice sized bits

1 brown onion, chopped

Pinch of saffron powder (turmeric, will do if you have no saffron)

2 tsp chicken stock powder

Chopped shallots for garnish. Parsley or coriander, if you have no shallots.

Method;

Place all ingredients for curry pork, except beans, in pressure cooker. Turn on high can cook for 40 minutes. You can use a slow cooker for this dish and leave it 4 hours on high, or 6 hours on low, if you don’t have a pressure cooker. 

Place green beans on a plate, on their own and steam in microwave, 1 ½ minutes.

Serve, with beans on top of the meat dish.

For the cauliflower rice;

Place chopped cauli and onion in fry pan, with a dash of olive oil. Fry for a few minutes, then add chicken stock and saffron. Mix well, cooking for 5 more minutes. 

Chop shallots on an angle. Serve cauli rice and top with shallots. 

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The Meaning Of Life.

 

If you feel you must compare yourself, you only need to compare yourself with who you are today, as against who you were yesterday. Don’t compare yourself against someone else. They haven’t lived your life, with your problems, or your skills. They have their own problems and skill set to work with.

What’s the one thing in life, that you’re doing every day, which screws you up, which you hate and which you wish you could change? What number one thing do you wish to change about yourself? Because only you can change your life. 

It all starts with you. Your life is your responsibility. It doesn’t matter how lowly we feel we are in life, or for that matter, how high. There’s always one thing we can change in our lives and it begins with us. We need to assume the responsibility for where we are in life and for where we’re headed.

You might not even start with what you want to change, if that task seems too big. It might start with making your bed. If you can achieve that one small thing, you might tidy your room next. Small changes every day, will eventually lead to big changes. So if you feel the issue is too great to bear straight up; start small. 

When you feel you’re able, work on that one thing. We don't have to change everything about ourselves, we just need to make a start on one thing today and when we’ve overcome that, work on another thing tomorrow. You don’t know how much change you can make, or how much good you can do in the world, until you try and once you overcome your greatest battle, you have authority to help someone else overcome theirs. 

And that is the meaning of life. Many of us want to know; what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Changing your life from drudgery and boredom, to one of interest and excitement, brings meaning into your life. Helping someone else change and overcome their battles, will bring not only meaning into their life, but also more meaning into your life.

Changing what you dislike about yourself, is done incrementally. One tiny step at a time. Let's say you want to stop drinking, smoking, or overeating. Start with an hour, then two, then stretch it out further each day. It might not seem like a lot right now, but in a year, two years, three years, you'll be a lot further ahead, than if you didn't start in the first place.

Don't denigrate these small steps, at this time either. If you were lifting weights, you wouldn't expect to start at 100 kg. You'd start with 5 or 10 kg and you wouldn’t belittle that start, because you know, you'll build on that, if you keep going. Quitting a bad habit is the same thing; small increments each day.

There will be times you fail, times where you have that drink/food, or whatever it is, but don't quit. Have your moment and get right back to it. Don't let your default point stay where it is. Increase in duration and your natural default point will change, as those increments become the new norm. 

  

Bacon and Onion Frittata

Serves 2. Preparation 10 minutes. Cooking time 10 - 12 minutes.

                                         

Ingredients:

3 eggs, whisked

1 onion, diced

A good pinch of sugar

1 rasher bacon, diced

1 small zucchini, grated

1 cup grated cheese, of your choice

A pinch of salt

1 tablespoon chopped garden herbs

Salt and pepper to taste.

Method:

Turn oven on, to 175 deg. Line 8 in cake pan with grease proof paper. 

Fry the onion, with a good pinch of sugar. When onion has turned opaque, add bacon and fry until browned and slightly crisp. 

Wisk the eggs until smooth, add all other ingredients, including fried bacon and onion and pour into lined cake pan. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes (until egg mixture has set and lightly browned). Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. 

Lift paper lining, from tin and cut into 8 triangular wedges. 

This can be served as a light breakfast, or morning tea, or you could add a salad, for a tasty lunch.