Better Cacao Smoothie + Lecture

Today's Menu: I like to think I accomplished more today than usual, thus I neglected my food-making and opted for vita-mix smoothaliciousness instead. My Mother (hi Mom, love you) says my smoothies probably taste disgusting, judging by the ingredients. Oh yeah?! Well, they don't.

Morning smoothie: Banana, some cacao, pinch of cayenne, spinach, lemon half, orange, ambrosia apple, hemp seed nuts, water.

Lunch & Snacks: Lettuce and avocado salad. An orange. Some dates and a few cashews.

Dinner: A better cacao smoothie. Seriously, this one is really good. Stronger flavours than the other one. (I'm not addicted to the cacao; I'm appreciative of the feeling of satisfaction I get by being productive, that's all.... [insert angelic smile emoticon here].) Of course I didn't measure the ingredients -- But! I took a photo before dumping them (carefully) into the vita-mix:

1 banana
1 orange
1 ambrosia apple
a little spinach
some hemp nut seeds
more raspberries than last time
a couple pinches of ground cayenne
a pile of powder cacao (as pictured)
some water (not pictured; about 1 cup)



I've already switched to eating 100% raw foods (mostly greens + fruits + avocado + cashew overdosing, in my case) so the rest of the 90+ days will be filled with actual recipes (perhaps) and ongoing reports of how I feel and how much better I feel when I add a variety of foods to my currently limited menu of cashews and lettuce. Earl Nightingale or someone of his ilk (I've never used that word before) once foretold, 'the moment you make the decision to be successful, you are successful.' That resonates; I like shortcuts.

I did a quick search and found the actual words from his 1956 classic The Strangest Secret:

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you're immediately a successful person — you are then in that rare group of people who know where they're going. Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. Don't concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal — leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. All you have to do is know where you're going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today.

*sigh* I love feeling better than most people... *sigh* And I'm not kidding, either. I'm saying I love letting myself feel good, is all. Note to self: ambiguity is rarely a good thing.

So the above blockquote sounds corny as an excerpt, but taken in context of his full 30-minute recording, the message is a timely reminder to take personal responsibility for a life well-lived by beginning with the end in mind, and aligning every action to that vision. So he's really talking about the law of attraction, which is all the rage today. Hmmm, for the rest of the 90+ days I suppose all that's left for me to do is to enjoy living my life as though I'm that person I imagine myself to be, or something like that. Fun. I enjoy playing that game.

Remember in school when Ms. Teacher would spend a full class lecturing on the importance of knowing the requirements expected of you, by reading all the instructions before beginning any test or assignment? And then the next class, she'd hand out a test, and say to raise your hand when you were finished? And remember how most of the class would predictably skip over reading the instructions and instead dive into doing the 5 pages of arithmetic while the few kids who'd connected the dots from previous day would invest the 10 seconds (thought to be a waste of time by the others) in reading through the paragraph of instructions that suggested something like: "Simply turn to the last page, write your initials, then flip the page over and sit quietly at your desk to get an A. Do not answer any other questions unless you want to fail."? Aaand remember that you wanted the A, so you'd play the game as required for the A, then you'd sit and wonder why everyone else was working hard for the fail?

Yeah? Well that's not at all what Earl Nightingale was talking about.