Welcome back to Sunday School!

Here are a few homework assignments:

• Grab a cup of coffee
• Make some cereal
• Shop for your back-to-school jeans
• Go play
• Be good
• Get ready for a difficult, difficult week!

You have a lot to do today, you better get another cup of coffee!

My mom always told me “It’s nice to be important, but more important to be nice.” I like to think I took her advice, but some days it never hurts to have another gentle reminder. This is exactly why the first email I read everyday gives me a new idea on how to do some good.

I recently joined a network of Do Gooders. It’s a pretty nice group of people I have to admit, so I know you’ll fit right in.

The mission of DailyChallenge.org is simply to inspire people to do something good every single day. The network activates people around the world to practice daily acts of kindness, because a lot of people doing little things can create big change.

Here’s how it works:

I challenge you to join DailyChallenge.org. Don’t worry, there is no cost to join and the assignments are quite easy. For example, one assignment this week was to pay two people a compliment, another was to support your community by selecting locally grown produce. Things you were probably planning on doing anyway, knowing you.

Once you’ve signed up you will receive an email delivered each day with challenges submitted by your fellow members. You can even contribute challenges throughout the network as well.

I know you are already quite good, but can you be just a little do-gooder?

I hear voices in my head when I workout and they’re not coming from my iPod.

Sometimes I hear the voices of past personal trainers or coaches I once worked with, and sometimes I even hear my own voice. I’d like to introduce them to you.

Meet Heather. Heather is the voice of my spunky, yet fierce spinning instructor who, with gritted teeth and veins bulging screams: “GO JO! YOU GOT THIS! YOU’RE DOING IT!” and, “DON’T. YOU. QUIT.”

Sometimes, in the final stretch, she throws in some friendly reminders like, “You can do ANYTHING for 60 seconds!”

Then there’s Kim. Kim is a gentle soul who oozes sunshine, she was my first personal trainer. She counts my reps for me and as I near the end of a set she says things like, “8-is-great, 9-is-fine.” Kim taught me a lot about form and on many lifts her voice still reminds me to “keep your shoulders back and down.”

Krista, pictured here, is my online trainer. I’ve never met her in person and I’ve never even heard her voice, but I feel like I know her. Krista is from Ontario so her voice inside my head speaks with a Canadian accent. She visits when I am distracted by the interesting people that train at my gym, like the air-bowler for instance. Krista’s a former police officer so I picture her beside me with a big stick and a booming voice saying, “FOCUS ON THE TASK AT HAND.”

And then there’s my own voice. Sometimes, on challenging heavy lifting days, I kid myself by saying the weights are as light as air, and so I hear whispers counting down my reps, “5 marshmallows, 4 marshmallows, 3 marshmallows…” Other times my voice gets a little nasty and says things like, “Don’t you give up, you sally” or it questions my efforts asking, “Are you earning your carbs?”

And speaking of carbs, sometimes these voices follow me into the kitchen. Especially when I want just one more sliver off that row of

Wild Oat Bars. Out of nowhere a voice clears her throat and speaks, “Just a pinch to grow and inch.” Which really isn’t smart to say when I have a knife in my hand, but nevertheless, it makes me stop and think.

I hope you have enjoyed meeting the training team that lives inside me. I encourage you to turn down your iPod and tune into your inner voice the next time you workout. It’s there to challenge you, to give you some friendly reminders, to help you get the most of your workout, to make you think. That team is your inner spirit talking, screaming, cheering you on when you need it the most, and it’s there to make you stronger.

Now, the girls and I are off to (massage) therapy. When we return we just might change our Web address to www.sybil’s.blogspot.not.calm.

I am taking a nutrition course through an organization called Precision Nutrition. And, to my surprise, I am learning a lot more than just the macro nutrients that make up food. Each day we are given a lesson, some more challenging than others.

A few weeks ago we were simply asked to read and reflect on an article posted on Geoff Thompson’s Web site. Geoff is an incredibly inspiring, best selling author, teacher, screen writer, and martial artist. I contacted Geoff and asked if I could share this lesson with you, and he generously agreed. This message has challenged me, and as a result, my life is a lot more difficult. I invite you to see why.

Difficult Difficult, Difficult Easy

I bumped into an old friend from the distant past. In my early days as a hard–nosed knuckle–dragger he was one of my compatriots, and one of the hardest working martial artists around. He had always prided himself on his sinewy mentality when it came to all things physical, and he had a prolific work rate. After a brief (and predictable) catch up (how’s the work, the car, the kids, the wife and the mum – in that order) he said ‘hey, you still doing animal day?’

Animal day, for those that do not know, is a form of knock–out or submission fighting (any range, any technique) that I pioneered in the mad, bad (and often sad) 90’s. A time I absolutely loved, but a time I am also grateful to have left behind.

I shook my head in the negative. It had been a many years since I engaged in my last animal day fight.

‘Why not?’ he asked, adding, ‘I’m still mad for it.’

‘Because it is difficult easy,’ I said, ‘and in order for me to continue growing my character, I don’t need difficult easy. In order for me to grow my character I need difficult difficult.’

He gave me one of those loud, squinty eyed confused looks that shouted from a hundred feet ‘Explain!’

So I explained.

Even as a veteran of thousands of fights, animal days were still a scary experience for me, it was violent and dangerous and extremely difficult. But because I had fought so many times and knew the terrain well it no longer stretched me.

Whatever it was that I needed to reap from that hard period of my life had been well and truly harvested; there was nothing left for me to learn there. Animal day was still difficult, and from the outside looking in it probably looked as though it was mad difficult, but for me it wasn’t, in fact it had become difficult easy.

My friend was still in love with the ground–and–pound style fighting and whilst his physical prowess was evident he had not grown even a single inch in any other area of his life, probably not for the last ten years. His was the mistake made by many; they presume that if something is difficult then they are in the arena. But experience has taught me that the only time you are truly in the arena is when you are (ever so slightly) out of your depth.

Difficult easy is when you are on familiar terrain, not matter how hard the going.

Difficult difficult is when you find your self at the bottom of someone else’s class with three crazy training partners; fear at your left, doubt on your right and (that big bastard) uncertainty squaring up in front of you.

Difficult easy is treading water whilst kidding yourself that you are swimming against the tide.

Difficult difficult doesn’t need to employ pretense because it is drowning and swimming for its life.

I see many people suffering stalled development because they are so busy occupying themselves with very worthy, respectably, difficult easy tasks that they use to avoid the difficult difficult areas of their lives.

I am doing it right now as it happens. I should be doing a re–write of a difficult (difficult) film script that is over due, but instead I am busying myself with a piece of difficult (easy) work that is not really due to be in print for another fortnight (damn, caught myself out again!)

Some (more) examples; you bury your relationship problems (difficult difficult) under hundreds of miles of road running (difficult…but easy).

You fill every spare moment with hard lists of worthy causes (difficult easy) so that you don’t have the time to invest in the book that you were always going to write, or the film you would love to make (if only you were not so committed in other areas) or the (difficult…very difficult) painting career that you had always intended to create.

You immerse yourself in course after course, book after book (so difficult, and yet…so deliciously easy) on becoming a life coach/property developer/master chef instead of just getting out there (difficult, oh so difficult) and actually doing it.

Listen. Let me tell you, the moment a task becomes difficult easy you stop growing. That is a fact. In order to re–establish your vital development you need to take an honest inventory (difficult, very difficult – I have done it) of your life, ditch the pretence, and embrace the black that is…difficult difficult.

And stop chasing ostentatious challenges (that are difficult easy for you) and sort out your health; you are three stone over weight and your blood pressure is off the scale.

Kill the worthy endeavors that you think other people will think are impressive and do something truly and uniquely impressive; take your (secret) addictions to task and kill the porn (in all its forms).

Stop collecting trophies and certificates and belts that tell the word how successful you are and actually BE a success, by taking a hammer to that creepily burgeoning fear that you are harboring.

And don’t, please (like my old mate) fall into the trap of mistaking hard work – even extremely hard (easy) work – for progress. Because, let’s be frank, difficult easy is really just another way of saying ‘easy’, and there is no growth in easy.

We aspirants are into the hard game, the long game, the difficult difficult game. What we are not into, or what we should not be into is the game of easy.

I hope my favorite lesson makes you a little uncomfortable, too. I hope that it inspires you to push harder in your training, at school, at work, in your relationships, or wherever you are just coasting in the “difficult easy” arena. Because, you are better than that.

Now, go out and make it a very difficult, difficult day.

Now that you’ve had your coffee, worked out, read the paper, and gone to church. It’s time for Sunday School.

Today’s lesson: Food prep.

One of the things I’ve gotten in the habit of doing on Sunday afternoons is prepping food for the week ahead. It saves a ton of time during the week and keeps me on track so I don’t make horrible, no good, very bad food choices.

Here’s what I do:

• Cut up a ton of veggies so they are ready to toss into salads, stir-fry, eggs, and side dishes
• Whip up crustless quiches baked in muffin tins
• Bag my own 100 calorie packs of almonds
• Bake batches of homemade protein bars and wrap them up into individual serving sizes
• Hard boil eggs to eat as snacks, top spinach salads, or make into egg salad
• Slow cook oatmeal or steel cut oats to heat up each morning
• Brew coffee and green tea to mix in with shakes or just enjoy over ice

Now, I don’t eat meat, but if I did, I’d probably grill up a few extra pieces of chicken breasts to serve with salads, wraps, or a healthy chicken salad.

Just some food for thought. Now, go get chopping, do some laundry, and don’t forget to say grace before you eat.

Class dismissed, home-schoolers.

It’s Not about the Bike, My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong

I am a rebel like Lance Armstrong. I am breaking every journlistic rule by giving a book recommendation without actually finishing the story. But, I am doing this for your own good because:

1. You might need a good book to read this weekend and;

2. The Tour de France ends on Sunday so this is a timely read.

You don’t have to be a sports fanatic to be inspired by this fast paced read, I assure you. By page 62 you will learn life lessons of teamwork, patience, persistence, and overcoming obstacles…on and off the race track.

I don’t know what’s in store for the rest of the book, but I can tell it will be quite a ride. Speaking of rides, that’s another thing Lance and I have in common, we’re both doing a little biking this weekend.

LIVESTRONG.

I’m curious, what are you reading?

Dear Loyal 4 or 5 readers:

As you may have noticed, I am playing around with the template for My Favorite Things. I am only doing this because I got a note from a reader that said, “the new zebra template makes me car sick” and she wasn’t in a car at the time.

Please hang in there with me as I research a new layout that appeals to my diverse readership.

In the meantime, please enjoy reading today’s post directly below this letter from the editor. Especially you, Sheila! ; )

Best Regards,
The My Favorite Things Team

Hello Gorgeous! 

I recently learned about a great little movement called Operation Beautiful. It’s a simple but powerful idea and what’s great is we can all participate. 

The mission of Operation Beautiful is to leave anonymous uplifting messages on post-it notes for people to find reminding them that they are beautiful (even if they are having a fat and/or bad hair day : ) ).  

Operation Beautiful is spreading like wildfire! Post-it notes with creative messages are popping up in grocery stores, bathrooms, mirrors, scales, lockers, you name it!

So, here’s our homework:

1. Watch this 3 minute video.

2. Put a pad of post-it notes and a pen in your purse.