And I’ll bet there’s one in your kitchen, too.

Across the globe, from the Balkans to Bozeman, there is a legend told of a man (a brave, a farmer, etc, but never a woman, we don’t talk to snakes) who is on a mountaintop (in a field, in a blizzard, etc.) In the cold, this man happens upon a viper.  Freezing to death, the snake begs the man to pick him up and put him inside the man’s coat (carry him down from the mountain, etc.) The man, showing presence of mind despite the talking snake, replies, “Nothing doing.  You’re a snake and you’ll bite me.”  The snake says, “Nah, man! That was the old me!  I’m a changed viper, dude.  I won’t bite you.”

This goes back and forth, back and forth until, finally, the man picks up the snake, tucks him into his coat and carts him off someplace nice and warm.  Upon arrival, our village idiot budding herpetologist puts the snake down, expecting some kind of snaky high-five.  Instead, the snake bites him.

“Dude!  Not cool!  You gave me your word you wouldn’t bite me!” says our guy.

To which the snake replies (and here’s the important part), “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”

Playing with fire. Tempting fate. Having a tiger by the tail. Walking down the snack aisle.  All expressions of voluntarily putting oneself in a dangerous position – or they should be.

Yesterday, I baked some yellow mini-cupcakes to take to a barbeque.  As far as cupcakes go, they weren’t all that bad – yellow cake, hollowed out a little to hold various sliced fruits, dark chocolate, and/or whipped cream.  Devoid of icing, they were a better choice.  Still, let’s not kid ourselves here: they were cupcakes. They are nutritionally bankrupt food fine for a celebration, but not to have hanging around my kitchen like I do this morning.  There is a snake on my countertop and it is shaped like a cupcake.

To a nicotine addict, cigarettes are dangerous.  To a sugar addict, snacks are just as deadly.  As I’ve said before, I do not keep them in my house…I can’t.  I have lost a lot of weight, yes; however, I still have food issues and the smartest way for me to deal with them is to control my exposure to them.  I can’t eat what I don’t have.  And if I choose to keep things like the cupcakes in my house, then I’m just asking to get bitten, after all, I knew what it was when I picked it up.

So, as we go forth today, let’s bear in mind the man and the snake, and Jim Croce who sang:

And you don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Betty Crocker.

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

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He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

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For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

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For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

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We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

I have a thing about blank journals.  I really love them – the beautiful covers, the pristine pages, the stiff spines.  I can’t even begin to tell you how many I’ve bought over the years.  Here’s the wrinkle (b’cause you knew there would be one): I don’t like to write in them.  I don’t want to mess up the snowy pages.  I admitted that in a bookstore with my aunt once and thought that both she and the saleslady were going to succumb to laughter-induced hypoxia.  I didn’t really think it was all that funny.

The empty book can be anything; but, the second I write in it, then I’ve defined it as something. In a shrink-wrapped mind, maybe I am avoiding limiting the potential.

One of the best parts of my job is networking.  I go out and meet some fantastic people who do some interesting and sometimes bizarre things.  Last night found me with a group of female entrepreneurs.  Event organizer April shared a powerful visual that reminded me of all my empty journals.

Imagine that I find myself in the presence of my maker who holds a book.  The first half of that book is filled with pages that are the story of my life to this point.  Each event carefully cataloged and recorded in precise detail. Even memories I have lost still live in those pages.  But, the second half of the book is filled with fresh, immaculate pages. These pages await the story of my choosing.  The story doesn’t necessarily have to be a logical continuation of the first half.  This part of the story hasn’t been written or even conceptualized yet. What do I want it to be?

The empty pages of my journals may have represented undefined potential; but, in reality, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed my beautiful collection, the books were really rather sad.  Like the ship in the adage, “A ship in harbor is safe. But that is not what ships are built for,”  my books were safe. Their potential was unlimited; but, in the end, they were never used even for their purpose.  Their potential was both unlimited and unrealized.

And so it goes with the rest of my life – the pages are blank.  The story is unwritten. Do I let the first half of the book define and limit the second half or do I wrest control from momentum and write a new story? What words, thoughts, beliefs and actions do I want to comprise the story of the second half of my life? Will I have the courage to write them?

Yes, I will.  At this likely halfway point, I’ve already redefined my body, my thoughts and my career.  If the story becomes a movie as I write it, you go get the popcorn. I don’t want to miss this next part.  This is when it gets really good.

I’ve been reading Guerrilla Marketing and one of the points that author Jay Conrad Levinson makes repeatedly is that you have to be committed to your marketing plan. He was involved in creating the Marlboro Man ad campaign that took that brand from sales basement to sales stratosphere, from oblivion to icon. When the campaign started, the brand was #31.  After a year of Marlboro Country, the brand was…..still #31. The ad team was disappointed; but, the client had believed them when they told him that results were not instant. The client was in it for the long haul and it paid off for him in a big way, redefining #1. (Ignore the fact that we are discussing cigarettes, here, folks. Landscape. Think landscape.)

My problem is that I’m a member of the “Just Add Water” Generation. In fact, I am Queen of the Just Add Water People. I can make potatoes and rice in mere minutes.  Luscious, flaky biscuits in no time.  Heck, I can grown my own sea monkey kingdom in just a few days!  I can have nearly anything I want in less time and with less energy than at any other time in the history of mankind.  Stonehenge took hundreds of years and thousands of people to build.  Las Vegas has been built and rebuilt a gazillion times in only 66 years. It took the pilgrims about six weeks to cross the Atlantic.  The Concorde could do it in just under three hours. It took Merriweather Lewis two years and 25 days to travel from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Northwest.  Last summer, it took the Dotys five days to drive from Nashville to Tacoma … and we had my tiny bladder to deal with!

My point is this: I would have made the. worst. pioneer. ever.  Caroline Ingalls would have killed me with her bare hands and no jury would have convicted her. This waiting for a marketing campaign to bear fruit or waiting to lose a few pounds is, frankly, for the birds. I want results and I want them now!  While this Positive Thinking Blog Goddess title is catchy and all, I do not, in fact, hold sway over the laws of space-time.  Physics ignores me.  I fall into the universe of The Rolling Stones – I can’t always get what I want. Sigh.

I cannot control those things; so, what can I control?

I can control my focus.  What am I looking at?  Am I looking at past failures? Am I looking at or giving credence to head trash, either others’ or my own? Or am I keeping my eye on the prize, believing that my campaign will pay off? Do I believe that I can lose weight? Do I believe in the process?  If I don’t, then I’ve got to recommit or re-evaluate.  But, if I do, then I have to put my blinders on, ignore the distractions, keep the faith and carry on. I go from The Stones to Kansas and carry on, my wayward son.  There’ll be peace when you are done.

Peace, progress, and success – even for the Just Add Water People.

Saturday night, my son and I went to the gym.  Jaegar, son of Brodin god of Swole, is working with me on lifting weights.  While we were there, a young, overweight woman came in.  I thought, “Good for her!”  She left after about five minutes and my thoughts became less kind.  I said as much to my son and The Swole godling shared with me the gist of something he had read on Reddit.  That something, frankly, shamed me.

An obese man wrote about going to the gym and confessed why he would go, stay five minutes, then leave. He was embarrassed.  He believed that everyone there saw him as The Fat Guy At The Gym, a waste of equipment space and time. “Look at The Fat Guy trying to work out.” He hated the thought of the unspoken ridicule so much that he would flee.  After a time of forcing himself to stay there and of making progress, he noticed others coming to workout – others who were larger than he.  He saw them and noted that they were fat guys, not Fat Guys.  He realized that, in all likelihood, no one had ever thought of him as The Fat Guy, either.  He had just been a fat guy in the same way that I am a white woman.  The adjective is a description, not a definition.

I had believed the same thing.  I hated going to the gym, certain that the Toned Bodies were looking down on me, mocking me in their hearts, if not with their voices.  The truth is that they probably noticed me only as a person in the room.  There were probably no judgements at all.  The Toned Bodies are likely to get truly annoyed only with those who stroll on the treadmill, talking on the phone, wasting equipment time while doing nothing. I let my own beliefs keep me away.  I used them as an excuse, as a crutch to stay out of the gym. In my own heart, I believed that I would fail, that I was a fraud and I was certain that the Toned Bodies could see that with some kind of gym rat x-ray vision. (There’s not such thing, just so you know.) I created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now, I don’t know why that young lady left – maybe she felt intimidated by the runner near her (I sure did), maybe she left the oven on, maybe someone called her with an unexpected opportunity, I don’t know. I projected my own old motives onto her, which is neither fair nor logical. However, the event became a teaching experience from son to mother (funny how THAT little tidbit wasn’t in the parenting brochure!) He reminded me that the demons I have fought down to size are still enormous for others.  I tend to think that I’m so far behind the power curve that surely everyone else is in front of me on stuff like this.  But, the fact is, we are not all in the same place.

While my body is much smaller than it was, I still see the wide hips and all the junk in the trunk.  In spite of my success to date, in my mind, I am still The Fat Girl at the Gym.  The difference is that, now, I don’t let that keep me away. I hope that no one else does, either.

I am super late posting today as this morning was spent in the company of a whole, great, big, bunch of powerful women. I had to get up before the chickens, but the event was completely worth it!

I attended Powerful Women: A Strategic Forum for Women Business Owners. The panelists were all female business owners who very candidly shared their experiences. While I heard few revolutionary ideas, I heard a tremendous amount of conventional wisdom that bears repeating on a regular basis.

• Diversity is key – We need differing viewpoints and opinions to develop sound practices and thoughts.  If all we ever hear are our own thoughts and opinions (either from within or without), the flaws are reinforced – kind of like genetic mutations.  With enough repetition, we can end up with the ideological equivalent of a hairless cat or Dennis Rodman – not good news in either case. In diversity, we get other perspectives on who we are, allowing us to …
• Know ourselves – That input helps us draw more realistic pictures of who we are.  It is essential that our self-images be grounded in reality so that we can determine our strengths and weaknesses.  Once we know those, we must ….
• Surround ourselves with good people – It’s less essential to know everything than it is to know people who know the things that we don’t know or whose strengths prop up our weaknesses.  We cannot be all things to all people and that’s okay!  It’s human, for crying out loud!  Even with good people and our own talent, we sometimes fail.  When that happens, we must …
• Accept responsibility – Few things will erode confidence in or respect for someone faster than their refusal to take responsibility for their actions, whether intentional or un, which resulted in mistake or offense.  “I apologize” – two words worth more than their weight in gold.  They are simple, obvious and the quickest way to allow ourselves to move on to the next step which is to …
• Pick ourselves up – If we try, we are going to fail.  It happens.  “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt.  We have the energy to continue to try and succeed and fail and pick ourselves up because we …
• Nurture ourselves – We’ve talked about this one before.  We must recharge our own batteries, else we cannot do those things which lead us to healthier lives.  You know it; I know it – it’s WAAAY faster and easier to grab a couple of Tastykakes than it is to steam some veggies and bake some salmon.  But that’s not going to nourish our bodies.  Likewise, we have to do those things which nourish our spirits.  If we allow our bodies and spirits to become compromised, we are worthless to both ourselves and to those around us.

As I said, none of these ideas are particularly revolutionary; however, they are all good, solid pieces of wisdom we should have stitched on throw pillows.  And, in my opinion, the last one needs to be stitched biggest.  Neglect of our own bodies and spirits is insidious and nearly invisible; however, as panelist Elizabeth Moss reminded us this morning, it’s the oxygen mask thing.  “In the event of loss of cabin pressure, please secure your own mask first before assisting others.”

If we don’t take care of ourselves first, we end up with nothing to give others.