So poster child for the full plate, did you check out Google as I suggested in the previous post? Did you take a good long look at yourself naked in the mirror? Did you ask your children or family if they would want to live life the way you do? Are you now finally ready and willing to make the change from running around like a chicken with your head cut off and living life with a full plate?
Well without further ado here are five simple things that you can do to clean your full plate:
1. Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach. My mother was fond of telling me this when I was a child. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me back then. Actually, every time she said those words to me I thought she was – well let’s just say – a little insane herself.
How could my eyes ever be bigger than my stomach? What a dumb thing to say or so I thought. What I didn’t understand as a child was that my mother was only being figurative. Literally what she was encouraging me to do was to eat less than I thought I might want to eat based on my initial sight of food. Her recommendation was to leave some space on my plate.
In respect to reducing our full life plate, my mom’s expression is equally applicable. Your day can be just as enjoyable if not more so without having it so full of stuff that everything you do, every minute of every day melds together. Leave yourself some free space, your plate doesn’t have to be full. Your days and life will be much better if you have some time to just be.
2. You don’t have to eat everything. These words are lost on most people. The next time you go out to dinner watch the enormous portions of food delivered to the tables around you. I say watch the other people dining because of course moving forward you will no longer be eating the way of the human hogs. What I believe you will observe is that there will be few if any who will leave anything on their plate.
The consumption of so much food speaks to Americas overeating problem. No matter the size of the portion served, Americans have been conditioned to believe not only that we must eat everything on our plate but that we deserve to have dessert afterward. The truth is that like our actual dinner plate, it is okay not to try to consume everything that is put on your life plate.
It won’t kill you to have a smaller portion. It won’t kill you to leave something off your plate. However, it might kill you sooner than later if you don’t stop piling more things on your life plate than your mind, body and spirit can handle.
3. Share your meal with someone else. Chances are that when you look at the menu and when you glance at the food being delivered to the other patrons, you will notice that one dish is in many cases more than sufficient for two people. Instead of acting as if you were a pig at the trough without self-control, share your meal with someone.
As with your full life plate, share those things that crowd your life plate. Share some of the responsibilities that fill your plate. Delegate some of the tasks that bleed over into the time and energy needed to complete another task. Assign some responsibilities to others so that there can be some free space on your plate.
In particular, you should share and delegate your tasks and responsibilities with those who are most likely to benefit. Odds are that outside of the things you are doing for work, your children and family are the most likely beneficiaries.
It might just be me but I believe beneficiaries should also be their own first and most committed benefactors. Or as I have instructed my son from the first time he cried out for a bottle of breast milk, “If a man doesn’t work a man doesn’t eat.” If you teach and apply this rule to the process of raising your children when they are small, you will discover that you are aging much more gracefully than your peers and your plate will not be full.
(Caveat: don’t implement this rule too early as the Department of Children and Family Services seems to have slight problem when it is applied to infants.)
4. Skip politeness, just say “no thank you”. I know that this rule is extremely hard for some but you can say “no thank you”. There is no law that requires you to accept everything that is offered to you. You don’t have to pile anything on your plate to begin with nor do you have to take a plate in the first place.
Try taking the advice found in the lyrics of the Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 classic, Rapper’s Delight. The early Hip Hop poets explained that when you don’t learn to say no thank you, you might find that people will not only want to give you one plate of food that “just ain’t no good” but they will want to “pile some more on your plate”.
While the Sugarhill Gang was rapping about macaroni and cheese that was soggy, peas that were mushed and chicken that tasted like wood, your life plate is metaphorical to the plate of food the Sugarhill Gang detailed in their song. In life, people will often attempt to put the stinky mess on your plate, the junk that is rotten, the matters that are ugly and issues that will make you nauseous.
Per the advice of the Sugarhill Gang, as soon as you see people coming with the unhealthy and undesirable items to put on your plate, you have one of two choices. One you can say “no thanks” and tell yourself “that’s it I got to leave this place”. Or two, you can let them pile more stuff on your plate in which case like the polite protagonist in Rapper’s Delight, you are going to need to “run to the store for quick relief from a bottle of Kaopectate”.
5. Get a doggie bag. If you are eating out alone, remember that you can always ask for a doggie bag. You don’t have to eat yourself into a coma like most of your family and friends who will immediately after eating a meal need caffeine from a diet soda or stimulant from a zero calorie drink to wake them up after overindulging.
Instead of trying to pile everything on your plate at one time, try taking something or several things off your plate which can be tackled later. In other words, prioritize.
Everything can’t be urgent. Everything doesn’t require your immediate attention. Do the ABSOLUTELY must do things first and put the other less significant things in life’s proverbial Tupperware dish. And just like the actual food in the Tupperware dish, the other duties and tasks you have been assigned will keep for a while until you have time to get to them.
That’s it five simple steps to go from gluttonous insanity to a person who is the prototype of one who is mentally, emotionally and physically healthy. Five easy moves to make you the exemplary role model that your child will esteem and strive to emulate. Five suggestions to help you go from one with a full plate to one whose cup (life’s joys) runneth over.
Do I have joy or junk? Am I the person that I want my child to become?