The reboot finished on Wednesday night, and despite a brief stall when I had a run of 5am starts and didn’t get nearly enough sleep (between 4.5 and 6 hrs), as well as not drinking enough water those days (too busy, so never took the time to fill my bottle for the desk), after I finally realised what was stopping it and made arrangements, and guzzled extra water to counteract it, I finally headed a little further downwards just before the 10 days wound up.

As expected, I rebounded a little the day after, when I had food in the system again.  Not as bad as I thought, with 0.7kg, so I figured it might go up a bit further on the second day – after all, we’re supposed to take 48hrs to process stuff.  I did kick off the exercise sessions again, with a morning bash at ‘Just Dance’ on the Wii Fit, and another one in the evening.  Surprise, surprise, day 2 post-reboot I actually went down again. Not by much, only 0.2kg, but still it puts me in reach of hitting my lowest point on the reboot – while still with food in my system!

So, the final details:

I have a function coming up on the 2nd March I want to be eating for, but I figure I can fit another 3 day or 5 day in before then, possibly starting Thursday 23.  I’m excited to see if I can get myself down under 135kg this month.

I have to say, I’m LOVING this juice thing!  Check out the picture – that’s the results on my Wii-Fit.  Pick where I started juicing!?  Oh, and those daily drops after day 2 are around the 1kg mark each.  The last one is that tapered off was still nearly half a kilo!

After the cold snap Day and to a lesser extent Day 3, things started coming good.  Very good. You’ve got the run down on Days 1 & 2 in my last post, but this week I’ve had early starts (leave by 5am), am still sleeping on an airbed while I wait for the replacement frame to my bed, and have been drastically busy, but I’m finding myself with a nice energy level despite all that.

Thursday I was so flat out at work that by the end of the day my eyes were sore, crossed and my head pounding.  I had a total break from anything computer on Friday, and they were still red at the end of the day – but at least I got in to the farmers market and grabbed some Kale!  Now I can do the mean green juice properly.

I’m finding myself craving particular juices, so I suspect it’s helping put me back in balance and in touch with where my body is supposed to be.  On the down side, I did have the new juice bottle I got as part of my juicing kit leak all over my backpack, so raced home yesterday to clean and salvage, but damage was minimal (despite it being a bright green juice with spirulina in it) so all ended up well.

Last night I even pulled out the Zumba workout, and managed to make it through a 20m workout without collapsing and feeling half dead like I usually do <grin>.  AFTER doing a full dance session on another program.  Amazing!

Progress:

Next Wednesday is the final day, 4 days from now, so I’m hoping to be at least another 2kg down (4.4lb) so that when I have food going through my system again, it won’t push me back over that 140kg mark again.  Hence introducing workouts as of last night.  I’m also planning on having at least 1, maybe 2 meals a day still as juice to keep things going downwards.  My next target is the 135kg mark.  I can’t remember last time I was there.  Would’ve been at least a decade.

Unless something interesting comes up  my next post will be the final summary, but depending on how full on work is this week it may not be ’til the weekend.  Catch you then!

OK so the sleep thing didn’t work out.  I still have hopes of trying it again some day when I’m in a bit more stable situation, work hours wise.  Meanwhile, even if I’m not actually biphasic, I seem to spend more time than not napping in the afternoon because I haven’t been able to get a full night in anyway.

Right now, and for the last few months, work and home have been in an absolute chaotic state of flux.  I’m still trying to get myself working closer to home, but meanwhile I’m juggling 5am starts, an overcommitted schedule, and a few other things.  I’m also working hard on getting past the blockage I seem to have hit in getting in shape.  Forget about plateaux – it’s more like I’ve reached an endless flat plain!

I got a wii-fit for Christmas, and that helped for a bit. Love doing the dancing on it, and it’s good for tracking.  But meanwhile between not enough sleep and falling back on sugar to fix my energy woes, it’s not doing it for me like it used to.

Then I saw a movie called “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead” on TV, and found an Aussie who’s evangelising the joys of juicing.

I’d promised myself I’d do a juice fast in the new year, but let it slide.  Now, I’ve joined up with a group at this guy’s website (jointhereboot.com.au) and kick started it as of yesterday – Monday.  I’ve done 3 days and 5 days before.  This time round I’m aiming for ten, and finally get below that darn plateaux of mine!

So far Day 1 was fine, except for cravings for (of course) potato in some form or another in the evening.  Why is it everyone always craves potato???

Day 2, today, got a bit harder.  I was a wreck when I got up, yawning and wandering around in a daze, so I reset the alarm and went in an hour later. (Probably as much thanks to only getting 3 hrs sleep Sunday night, getting another job application in, as much as the juicing!)  My nose started sniffling and I was COLD.  It wasn’t a warm day, but I was way icier than I should have been – I was tucking my fingers in under my arms to un-chill them.  It’s amazing how much body heat digestion generates, and how much I missed it!  (Packing a warmer jumper and gloves tomorrow).

Tonight, though, a bit of a breakthrough.  I found myself cleaning the kitchen.  It was almost compulsive.  I wanted to clean it all up so I could make my juices anyway, but I realised that I was feeling a need to reflect what was happening to me – as I cleaned up internally, I wanted my outside environment to reflect that.  I even shifted stuff around on the second drainer and scrubbed it down!!!  I made a vegetable juice (V8 style) for dinner and found it was more than satisfying, and I have more of it left in the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch.

I also started planning what I’m going to juice based on what I’m facing.  For example, I have an early start tomorrow, so normally I’d use oranges or orange juice to help wake me up.  I don’t have any left right now, but I know eating an apple works as well.  I also know strawberries have more vitamin C than apples anyway, so I’m going to do a favourite – strawberry and green apple.  Mid morning I’m having watermelon and mint, with a bit of greens thrown in, for hydration and ‘cleansing’. Lunch will be that nice filling V8 juice, because on an early day I’m always ravenous by then.  I’m bringing a coconut in for more hydration in the afternoon and that should get me through til I get back home and to a juicer again.

I’m probably also losing weight from the tons of weight I’m hauling around in liquid!  My backpack weighed heaps this morning, with about 3.5 litres plus a drinking coconut, as well as my normal gear.  I walked down the bus stop leaning forward like it was gale force winds – so I should get nice strong shoulder muscles out of this juice kick.

Between all the things I’m working on right now, I’m not even going to try posting daily on this, but I’ll update you on my progress when I hit the weekend again.

So a couple of days in to the Biphasic Sleep trial and I’m learning this is definitely something that needs customisation.

The evening of my first day, I napped from 7:30 to about 8:45pm.  It was a Sunday, which helped.  I had no problems getting up from the nap, made and had my dinner, and enjoyed having a few hours in which to unwind (TV) as well as get things done.  I was pretty much through what I wanted to do by 11:15, but made myself stay up until the clock ticked over to 11:30.  After that first night on the regime, I woke up like clockwork, got up, did some exercise, had my breakfast, and headed off.

That evening I had something I wanted to do at 7:30, so I napped from 6pm.  Not quite so easy to get up from that, and I ended up too tired to do anything by a little after 11pm.  Determined to stick it out, I pulled out the ipod and played sudoku for a bit – then realised it was 20 to 12.  Oops.  4am this morning came and it was NOT easy to drag myself up out of bed. I was so tempted to let myself have ‘another 15m’ but we all know what that turns into!  I’m thinking the nap yesterday was too early, and/or I need to work out when is the right time for me to nap to fit in with my circadian rhythms.  I ended up resorting to the paraliminal recordings to wake myself up again during the day a couple of times.

This afternoon I went back a little closer to 7:30, at 6:45pm.  I woke up, exactly half an hour later.  Since that session is supposed to be 60-90m, I went back to sleep until just on 8pm (45m later) when I got up again, but I’ve been yawning since.  I don’t know if I’m tired because a) I’m still adjusting to biphasic, b) I’ve not been napping at the right times, c) the exercise I did after my first night made a difference  or d) I’ve varied the nap times too much.

I am enjoying having what feels like a second day, all to myself, after I wake up in the evenings.  Once I’ve put my dinner, breakfast & lunch together, my time is my own and that’s a pretty good sensation – as is going to bed knowing I’ve accomplished at least some of the things I would’ve been struggling to fit into my overcrowded weekend.  The quiet would probably be a bit unsettling for a lot of people, but I’ve always loved the night-time silence.  I think it’s a pre-requisite for most geeks, isn’t it?

So, plan of attack:

• First off, stick with it.  At least 14 days, but aiming for 30.
• Secondly, have a set time for the afternoon nap, for at least 4-5 days without variation.  I’m thinking 7-8:30pm because that still leaves me the 2 hrs I want between dinner and sleep.
• Third, set an alarm to make sure I get to sleep at the right time each afternoon and night, until I get used to it.  By eliminating the variation, I should be able to get a better idea of just what adjustment I’m going through in adapting to the new sleep patterns.
• Finally, starting from week 2, I’m going to include a short yoga/tai chi stretching routine every morning, just to see if that was part of what made the difference these last few days. I don’t want to start it immediately or I won’t be able to tell what the effect is, separate from the fixed nap times.

Tired as I am tonight, even if I wanted to drop the trial, I’m not sure I could, considering the reasons why I started it..  This week and next I’m up for early starts most days at work  Plus I have to admit, I am enjoying the extra personal productivity time.  So, wish me luck?

Like most of us these days, I have too much on my list and not enough day to get through it.  I’ve been trying to get a job closer to home to cut down on the 3hrs + commuting time per day, but so far it’s not happened.  So, I’m going to try something different and raise the bar a bit.

Biphasic sleep.

If you (like me) read Steve Pavlina’s blog, you’ll already know all about it.  I was fascinated when he tried polyphasic sleep, even though there’s absolutely no way I could fit that into my current lifestyle.  Earlier this year, he started on biphasic sleep, which is something I’ve been doing informally when things get too stretched, except I always knew it as “nanna naps”.  I like his name better.

In a nutshell, you have one full sleep cycle of about 4.5 hrs, and one ‘nap’ of about 90m, in every 24hr period.  I’m thinking this could solve a few of the problems I’ve been having.

• Not having enough time between dinner and going to bed.  I know it’s supposed to be 2 hrs, but I often don’t have enough leeway between getting home and having to hit the sack for an early start again the next day
• A run of very busy, very early days coming up at work, while one of my colleagues is away and I inherit a few of his jobs.  This means having to leave by 5am, which last time left me a wreck – I came down sick as soon as he came back
• No time during the week for the basic stuff, like keeping my place tidy enough that I don’t have to spend half of Saturday making it look decent again
• A work project that pushes my Excel VBA skills beyond where I’ve ever gone before, and no time at work to develop them
• Wanting to spend time with friends and family on the weekend, but having too many other outstanding jobs to be able to relax and do that
• Never managing to fit the time in to do the writing etc that I want to, online
• And of course, like everyone, having too many interests and no time to pursue them

I figure if I have a nap between 6pm and 7:30pm (or somewhere an hour either side of that), I can get up from that, have dinner, pack lunch, get through some VBA, job hunting and ‘internetting’ – and maybe even catch the one or two good shows that are on tv these days, before taking my full cycle from 11:30-4am.  That leaves me enough time in the morning to not only make and have a proper, raw breakfast (I’m doing the Raw Balance initiative again) but probably even fit in some exercise beforehand, and still get away by 5am.

Tonight is the first night.  I’ll be trialling this for at least 14 days, but I’m hoping to track it to day 30 and then decide if it’s right for me to continue.

“Two roads divulged in a yellow wood, and I -
I took the road less travelled by
…and that has made all the difference”

~Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’

I studied this poem way back in the yonks ago when I was in high school.  I thought it was a cool poem then, but recently I’ve come to realise just how very enlightening it is, too.

While going through some new Raw Food info I found, I read that Dr Fred Bisci makes the point that it’s the foods you leave OUT of your diet that make the critical difference to your health.  Entirely out.  Not mostly, with an occasional splurge.  I started thinking about the difference between the bodies of the majority of us (struggling) and the few – and that it was this choice of what to walk away from (even in the face of temptation and ads galore) that marks the difference.

Then I started thinking that maybe this went further than food.  Let’s face it, these days there are ten million things we’re all encouraged to do.  We’re all supposed to work long hours, get enough sleep, work out at the gym, raise families, clean house, maintain email and social contact with friends and family, etc etc. In the few hours left over from that, the ‘default’ is to relax in front of the telly or down the club, or some other variation.   And so the weeks, months and years fly by, with little to mark them.

In the early years of passionately chasing my online dreams, though, I not only didn’t have a boyfriend, I didn’t have a TV, and chose to minimise my social life as well.  My leftover time all went to building my blog and building my online business.  I made a different choice as what I left out of my life, leaving things behind as I pursued that ‘road less travelled’ – and that was what made it my own life path, unique from everyone else’s.  (It’s also probably why I now struggle so hard to fit it in, as I’ve been pulled back closer to the main path of those long hours at a dayjob, juggling commitments that take up 120% of the time I have.)

Looking around the people I know, everyone who stands out as an individual has made some kind of similar choice – pick a road that differs from the norm, leave behind some of the ‘default’ stuff and chase something unique.  It’s not a big deal, it’s just who they are.  Or maybe, who they’ve made themselves to be.  It ties back to that fridge magnet I love – “Life is not about finding yourself.  Life is about creating yourself.”

So, now I know why I’m so drawn to blogs like ‘Zen Habits’, ‘Steve Pavlina’ and ‘Illuminated Mind’ – they all clearly walk their own unique paths, and share the views from there.  It’s not about focusing on what you leave out, it’s about focusing on choosing your path consciously, and walking it, regardless of how far away from the crowd it takes you. Fearlessly exploring a different life that openly departs from the norm.

Do you follow a ‘road less travelled’?  What choices have you made that took you away from the crowd and made your life the unique path it is?

[Here’s the rest of the poem]

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Imagine, if you will, a movie set, filled with actors and actresses.  Cameras are set up and ready to go, sound equipment on, pretty much everything is taken care of…

Except there’s no producer or director. Nobody knows where they are, or even who they are.

There’s been no briefing, no scripts, everyone’s just turned up on the day.  Of course they all have wildly different ideas of what they’re supposed to be doing, but were expecting someone to tell them for sure once they arrived.

In the absence of any clear direction, the vast majority do what everyone else is doing.

A few work to their own strengths, and vary it up a bit.  Not much, though.  They still follow the general life-path everyone seems to have fallen into.

A few decide to be contrarian, and deliberately work to do the opposite of whatever the ‘consensus’ rules are.  This annoys others, who set out to teach them a lesson.  An endless game of ‘Cops and Robbers’ ensues.

A very few see this setup as an opportunity, and start doing some directing themselves.  They start off small, but since they’re providing some of the clarity and direction everyone’s been looking for, naturally others gravitate to them, and their home made movie proceeds to grow, mostly in line with whatever they’ve decided it’s going to be. 

Some get inspired by this, and make attempts to start their own movie.  Some of them succeed.  Others, not sure exactly how it’s supposed to be done, try to direct their own movie while still looking over their shoulder at what’s happening with their original ‘director’ inspiration.  Of course, that doesn’t work so well, so a lot of these give up and wander back, thinking that obviously life’s not meant to be that easy, and the director’s success was a fluke.

One ‘director’ decides to have a sub-plot in her movie where her character produces her own movie about how to direct your own life.  She calls it "The Secret", and of course it’s wildly successful.  The only problem is, the same as when directors inspired people, most people then try to practise it while looking over their shoulder for someone else to direct them, so it doesn’t make a lot of difference to the stage.  It doesn’t take long until the majority are back saying ‘it doesn’t work’ and looking around for someone else to direct the movie they hope will feature their success.

Is this sounding familiar?

It’s not even a new idea.  Remember "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players"

We know we have the power to create our own lives, yet most of us plod along, content to follow the scripts designed by the committee of actors around us.  No wonder it’s a truism that your life will equate to the average of the lives of the 6 people you spend most time with – they’re YOUR committee.  You know what they say about design by committee, don’t you?

Which is going to be more interesting and fulfilling – a life designed, directed and starred by YOU; or a default committee written script with no overarching plot (except maybe a constant search for meaning and direction)?

Control is scary, yes.  Is it worth it?  Every autobiography of people who’ve forged their own way says, resoundingly, that it is.

It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing jump, though.  What about sitting down and writing a draft script for the next 5 years of your own life, and then seeing how much of it pans out?

I have.  It was fun!  Go on.  I dare you…

So I’m now into my second week of slowly implementing the Four-Hour Body protocols (Tim Ferriss).  There’s a few things I’m noticing, which are gelling with some of the insights I got while pursuing Raw Vegan (I haven’t yet found a way to do both, so temporarily I’m back to lacto-ovo vegetarian, although not much lacto anymore).

1. My biggest weight loss results are always the first few days after making a change.  Doesn’t matter what change.  I’ve had that with every other diet I’ve ever done.  In conjunction with reading somewhere else about how people can massively overconsume calories and still end up with comparatively small weight gains, and some of the fascinating case studies in the book, I’m starting to wonder if maybe the biggest consumer of calories is actually homeostasis.  Maybe your body burns more energy keeping itself stable than simply burning energy to keep going.  If this is the case, then making small changes incrementally over time should give me a better result than jumping head first into the program and following it 100%.  I also wonder if that’s behind the success of the “Change One Thing” diet.  In any case, last week’s change was a 4HB protocol type breakfast within 1/2 hr if possible, but definitely 1 hr, of waking.  I think I’m about 80% on that one.  Commuting still gets me (as does the temptation to get 10 more minutes with the snooze button)
2. There are two things that definitely put the brakes on any form of weight loss progress.  One is insufficient sleep (in my case, less than 7hrs).  The other is insufficient water.  Either one of those and it doesn’t matter how much or how well I ate/exercised the day before and the day before that, the scale WILL climb.  Catch up on whichever I shorted on, and it goes back down.  Weird, I know, but it’s happened way too often to have any doubts about it.
3. The water side led me to start wondering – maybe the reason the Raw Vegan diet has such amazing effects isn’t entirely because of enzymes.  Maybe it’s at least partially due to consuming more water, by not burning/cooking it out of your food.  Cooking increases caloric density, or concentrates the food, but we don’t drink the equivalent water to what we take out of it.  In fact, most people don’t even get 8 glasses/2 litres a day, which is meant to be the minimum.  If you’re bigger, you’re supposed to get even more.  Our bodies are largely water, although it’s interesting to note that the percentage of water starts out high and decreases with age.  Then you look at what age looks like, and it’s similar to how things shrivel up when they dehydrate.  I wonder how much of our age related degeneration is actually due to our bodies being unable to function because of chronic and sustained lack of water to work with?  We did, after all, emerge from the oceans, and each of us individually developed immersed in fluid for the first 9 months (or however many you got).

I have no conclusions from these, except that I want to get a bit more conscientious about drinking more water next.  I have noticed that when I do, the dry skin patches on knees and elbows get soft again, and my skin feels better.  If it does that for just the one organ of the skin, imagine how it might be helping all the others!  According to the bodyweight calculations, I should be getting about 4.7 litres a day.  I’m going to aim for minimum 2.5 for the next week or two, but target 3.5-4.5, and in conjunction with weekly changes to advance the next step of 4HB, we’ll see how it goes.

If you’ve been around for a while, you know I absolutely LOVED Tim Ferriss‘ last book, 4 hour workweek.

Well, he’s got a new one out, and it’s a serious doorstop!  If you want to buff up, try hefting the thing a few times!!!  Seriously, though, he admits it’s not meant to be read cover to cover, but it’s kinda like a hackers guide to the human body.  I love that description, and from the chapters I’ve read so far it’s absolutely right.  It’s called “4-hour Body”.  For some reason, being in Australia, I couldn’t get the ebook version (not on the allowed country list) but we’ve got the paperback released down here already.  I’m now buying copies for friends…

BTW, even if you buy it for weight loss, fitness or fixing your sleep purposes, I guarantee you won’t be able to resist reading the chapter on improving ‘physical relations’.  I’m not being coy, here, he does use the 3 letter word that sounds like a New Zealander saying ‘six’, but I don’t want to get filtered…   Oh, and just for disclosure purposes, yes it was the first one I turned to as well.  You’re got getting any more out of me than that.

Anyway, having only had it for a week, I’ve duly read the ‘getting started’ then the 2 foundation chapters, and the bits I wanted to focus on first.  His suggestion of only dealing with max 2 goals at the one time is one I’m going to stick to, overcommitting has been my downfall way too often.  So, my goal is to use this to get back where I was before Christmas (sigh) and then a bit more, until I’m under 120kg again.

Before measurements: (no way is the photo getting posted until there’s an ‘after’ to match it.  I’m comfortable with myself but not THAT comfortable, or I wouldn’t be reading the thing).  All measurements are in centimetres, although in reading another case study where they had 2″ above and below the naval, I’ve included those.

Now for the biggie – starting weight.  I obviously enjoyed Christmas, New Year and my birthday a little too much.  As at 24 Jan, I’d gone back up to 148.8kg (327.4lb).  The lowest weight I’d got to in the months before Christmas was a quick dip to 139.9, which was immediately followed by a binge of self sabotage that got me back to high 140s.  Mostly I’ve hovered around the 143-144 mark.  My highest weight was over 150kg.

So, starting on the 24th, I made 2 changes. I started off the day with a big glass of water.  I’m not up to 1.5L yet, but 600ml minimum (20.3oz) and gradually increasing.  Plus, I’m having breakfast according to the ‘Slow Carb Diet’ protocol.  That means I’m having to get up 20m earlier to prepare and eat breakfast before I go, instead of pre-making it the night before, carrying it in and having it once I hit work, about 2.5-3hrs after I wake.

As of this morning, my weight was back down to 143.8kg – and that’s AFTER my first cheat day!!!  (Technically I shouldn’t have had one yet, but having only got the book on the weekend, I hadn’t had time to go through 5 days before the occasion happened).  I had already got down to 143.1 beforehand, meaning the first goal of getting back to pre-christmas levels is already done!

The only other change I made aside from the 2 above, and it kinda happened organically, was that in the evening I found myself wanting garlic bread, so I’d home-make a slice with minimal bread (wholegrain), and after eating it wouldn’t actually want anything further.  So the majority of my eating is now in the first half of the day.  I didn’t work on that, aside from breakfast.  It just happened, struggle free.

Anyway, since I have a body composition scale, here’s the picture.  Since I get fractionally different results depending on the conversion site I use, all conversions here are via google calculator.  I’m chasing up where I can find a DEXA machine – so far nothing within a do-able distance.

I haven’t re-done measurements, I plan on doing those fortnightly.  (This weekend’s too crammed full already!)

Of course, since I’m fairly large already, the shock of changing to these protocols could account for at least part of the results, so it’ll be interesting to see if the full implementation continues the pattern.  You’ll see from above that it’s definitely showing that bodyfat is being dropped – even when I went slightly up after the cheat day the bodyfat continued dropping.  Being a stand-on scale using electical impedance means the composition measurements are primarily my lower body, but the hand-held omron is showing an over-limit error (maxes out after 50%) so I can’t include an upper body fat measurement yet.  I’ll keep trying, and once it drops enough I’ll include that here too.

Next week, my new fridge should arrive (the old one died but it’s taken a while for the model I want to get delivered to the warehouse), so I’ll be able to start shopping again, and implement a few more aspects of it.  I’ve also ordered the PAGG supplements he recommends, but I’ll probably hold off on using those until after I’m actually following the diet properly – that’ll be the first tweak after.

They call this time of year the “silly season”.  When you look at all the madness going around the shopping centres, on TV and everywhere else, it’s not hard to see why.  This is the season when the hype outweighs the voice of reason, and we’re all hypnotised into believing that we have to turn into mindless money-spitting machines. That, or feel that we’re somehow deficient as human beings, and letting down everyone we know and care about.

Hang on a minute.  Isn’t Christmas supposed to be in celebration of a guy who set out to demolish the money-changers way back when???  At what point did it all get so twisted around?

Yes, the message is everywhere.  Money equals love.  Not spending enough money is supposed to be your greatest fear this time of year, because it means you don’t love someone enough.  Do you really, truly believe that???  Is your love for those around you really only demonstrated once a year, via something wrapped up and sat under a tree?

Even more so, do you judge the people who love you by what they’ve given you, on a day that actually has nothing to do with either the two of you or your relationship?

Does your world revolve around money or love – or do you have the two so mixed up you can’t actually tell them apart?

I recently set my niece and nephew (7 & 10) a challenge to act as ‘Santa’s little helpers’ and do 3 nice things for their mum or dad to make them feel special.  The day’s not here yet, but my sister tells me how fantastic it’s been – the best Christmas ever.  Interestingly, though, both of them chose one ‘nice thing’ that revolved around gifts and/or money.  These are kids, and they’ve already learnt that’s how you make someone feel special.  In a way, that’s sad.  In another way, I’m proud of them for the other 2 ideas they came up with (and they’re the things that made her feel best of all).

Imagine, for a moment, what you would do if you were set a challenge to have Christmas one year WITHOUT SPENDING ANY MONEY.  How much more creatively could you demonstrate your love and affection, if shopping and ‘things’ were taken out of the equation?

Most importantly, would the time you spend together with your loved ones feel more or less meaningful?

Maybe it’s a bit much these days to try and have a cashless christmas, but can you at least consider including a few alternative demonstrations of your caring and affection to make your friends and family feel special, even before the presents get opened?  Lets take the emphasis and start putting it back on ‘Love’ this holiday season.