Vegan by Valerie

Watermelon Basil Sorbet + A Side of Motivation

It’s hot in Chicago… cool down with some watermelon basil sorbet! And don’t forget to keep reading until the bottom of the post where I review the book I read that just changed my life, Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins.

The lessons learned from this book can be applied to your personal or professional life, and can also help to improve your relationships with others as it gives you an insight to their behavior and internal motivation.  Most importantly, it helps you to learn your true potential by increasing your positive thoughts and decreasing negative ones.

Watermelon Basil Sorbet

Ingredients:

12 basil leaves

1/2 c. water

3 c. watermelon

4 T. lime juice

1/3 c. + 1/4 c. maple syrup

1 c. coconut milk

pinch sea salt

Instructions:

1. Boil the water;  add basil leave and let sit 5 minutes, strain.  You can skip this step if you would rather keep the basil raw – in this case, just throw the basil an water into the ice cream maker with the rest of the ingredients.

2.  Combine all ingredients in an ice cream maker and follow the instructions for the machine.

****************************************************

I first heard about Awaken the Giant Within when I read a recommendation on No Meat Athlete. I thought the book might be cheesy, but I had a gift card to Borders so I picked up out of curiosity.  As some of you know, I have a Masters degree in social work which means I have read many, many books about motivation and human behavior, and I have spent a lot of time learning therapeutic techniques.

In all honesty, this book pretty much blows everything else I have learned out of the water! Here are some of my favorite points:

• Similar to vision boards, Robbins strongly believes in the power of positive visualization. I recently ran across this quote by Dr. Robert Schuller that “You are what you think about all day long” and I firmly agree with him.  What do you think about all day long – how your boss/friend/partner/family member pissed you off?  How many calories you’ve eaten?  Many of us unknowingly devote a great deal of our time to negative ruminations and consider it normal.  On a day to day basis, it may not seem like a big deal to spend hours out of each day angry or irritated, but it adds up to actual days or even weeks out of your life spent being negative.  (My thoughts, not Tony’s!)
• Robbins espouses the practice of asking yourself “morning power questions”, such as “What about my life am I excited about right now?”. At the end of your day, follow up with introspective questions such as “How has today added to the quality of my life?”
• There is a fascinating chapter about vocabulary.  Robbins realizes something that I’ve always known, which is that words shape our beliefs and impact our actions. Therefore, he advises using transformational vocabulary to break bad habits/patterns and to form new, desired ones.  For example, instead of saying “I’m f****** pissed off about my boss”, state that you are “somewhat peeved about a situation at work”….or, instead of being ‘nervous’ for a date, instead you are just ‘excited’.  It sounds simplistic, but this simple action of replacing an emotion-filled word with one that packs less of a punch will change your entire physiology…kind of like the fact that it’s difficult to be angry while smiling.  A few months ago I tried coaching a friend to say “silly billy” to drivers that piss her off instead of swearing names at them to curb her road rage tirades – it worked!
  
• It is important to think about, and write down, what values are most important to you – in order.  Often, this can help you realize that your current values are impeding you from making decisions or reaching a greater level of happiness. For example, if you rank your values so that #1 is growth and #2 is accomplishment, you may originally be excited about a new job prospect because it is an accomplishment.  However, after awhile if this new job no longer stimulates you to grow as an individual, it is time for you to move on – it is no longer meeting your #1 goal.
• Robbins talked about whether our internal “rules” empower or disempower us. Ask yourself:  “What has to happen in order for me to feel ____?” For example, if you ask yourself what needs to happen for you to feel accepted by others and you say that you need to feel like you are accepted by everyone that comes across your path, you are setting yourself up for failure.  I loved this section since I am frequently a perfectionist when it comes to myself and my accomplishments.
• One of Robbins’ best quotes: “While most people have to establish competence before they feel confident, I decide to feel confident and that provides the sense of certainly to persist until I AM competent.” I often feel like I want to be more confident in my abilities at my job, but long for the experience and years that will make me more competent…. when really, I’ve got it backwards!
• One of my favorite parts of the book is when you are asked to take a 10 Day Challenge during which you do not hold any negative thought for longer than two minutes. If you do retain the negativity for longer than two minutes, you have to start the challenge over for another full 10 days.  I’ve been attempting this for the past few days, and it’s harder than it sounds!  Robbins states that 10% of your time thinking about a problem should be spent actually thinking about the problem, and the other 90% should be spent thinking about the solution. I love this!
• At the end of the book, Robbins challenges you to confront various negative situations plaguing our world, from homelessness to gang violence to the environment.  In the section about the environment, he discusses the negative impact that eating meat has on the environment – a topic that, as a vegan, I am very passionate about.

-          You can save more water by not eating one pound of beef than you could by skipping showers for an entire year.

-          More energy is consumed by the beef industry than any other single industry in the US.

-          If we were to reduce our meat consumption by 50%, we could totally eliminate our reliance on nuclear power throughout the US, as well as significantly or completely reducing our reliance on foreign oil imports.

-          The same acre of land that would produce 250 pounds of beef would produce 400,000 pounds of potatoes – the difference between feeding one person and 160 people!

-          The land required to feed one meat eater for one year is 3 ¼ acres;  for a vegetarian, ½ acre; for a vegan, 1/6 acre.  In other words, one acre can feed 20 times as many people if they eat a vegan diet!

What do you think about this?  Which of these points is your favorite?  Do you think you could complete his 10 day positivity challenge?

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.