Shifting Gears

"A highly successful electronics executive, this man compared perfect health to the kind of 'breakthrough thinking' that transforms corporations. Breakthrough thinking is a unique form of problem solving: it involves making a situation better by first raising your expectations much higher than anyone believes possible and then looking for ways to make your vision come true. 'If people continue to think and act in the same familiar ways' this man commented, 'they may accomplish five to ten percent improvements by working harder.  However, to get improvements of two to ten times, targets must be set high enough that people say, 'Well, if you want that much improvement, we'll have to do this an entirely different way.' "
----from Perfect Health:The Complete Mind Body Guide Deepak Chopra

As someone who is extremely interested in "lean thinking", process flows, process improvements, and problem-solving in general as it can be applied to large-scale processes or daily activities, I was blown away by how I have failed to apply the same concepts to my health.  To me, the transition of one to the other makes perfect sense.  For example, I have noticed with myself, that I have broken my health issues into compartments - things that I want to fix right away, things that can wait, and things that are "nice to have"s but not necessary.  Even when  I talk to my Ayurvedic doctor and we discuss the holistic approach to health that Ayurveda embodies, there is some part of me that thinks I need to prioritize my symptoms and take care of them one by one, like checking items off a grocery list.  I am very resistant to the idea that there is a one-stop solution for all bodily ailments, despite the fact that I can imagine clearly how this could be true.

After I read the above quote I realized that the best process fix is to revolutionize the whole tamale-set a really high goal which forces a complete re-thinking!  Brilliant!  This may still necessitate the breaking down of the whole into sections and dealing with them one by one, but the overall goal is one that affects it all.

So, how to go about this when it concerns my health?  That is really the big question folks. 

In the training I have received on how to facilitate events concerning the reduction of waste and the increase of efficiency in the workplace, the steps are as follows:
1. Identify all the key players that touch the process in question
2. Lock them in a room for a few days with a facilitator to drive the discussion
3. Create process maps for the way things are now
4. Identify gaps in the process (all using the language of 'opportunities of improvement')
5. Create tasks based on these gaps
6. Map out the new process

Having participated in/facilitated a number of these events I can definitely see in retrospect that the goals we outlined going in, set the stage perfectly for the 'five to ten percent improvements' mentioned above.  They were more like spring-cleaning goals versus complete re-decorations.  I wonder if this is what I have been doing with my health; puttering along making small tweaks here and there instead of setting a really high goal that makes me think completely differently.  I am not talking here about running away to some ashram in India never to return, or becoming a level 6 vegan overnight (you know, the level where you can't eat anything that casts a shadow?), but what about shifting the gears in the mind?  What about choosing to look at things in completely different ways?  Ultimately, is this even possible or are we doomed to return to our habitual patterns of thinking?  I am hoping that the further I get into Dr. Chopra's book, the more ideas I will have about how to proceed, but in the meantime the spring cleaning is underway and even if it's not enough, chasing out the proverbial dust bunnies from under the bed is still better than doing nothing at all.  Ammirite?

I call him Fluffy

I have become a cat person.  The kind of person that has a whole album dedicated to their cat on Facebook.  The kind of person that talks about their cat like it is a child.  Luckily, almost all of my friends are also "cat people".  We sit around and compare stories of cute/annoying/funny/abnormal things that our cats do.  This conversation always starts with one simple story and then, before we know it, we are an hour deep into cat lore.  I worry about this.  Before I owned a cat, my friends' cat stories were boring and tedious to listen to.  This all changed when I got my cat and had my own stories to contribute.  The thing is, I know that this will happen again when my friends start having babies, and frankly I don't think I could do another round of listening to stories without being able to contribute. It is just downright boring.  I guess this will force me to a) have a baby, b) get better at steering the conversation towards something else, c) get new (childless) friends.  At least I have a few options.

I'm a white person!

I am apparently quite late at discovering this but I think it is fantastically funny and recommend it to all y'all!

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

I am particularly fond of #128

I can never look at him the same way again...

I had one of those dreams last night that lingers in the back of your mind all day.  For some reason it is not just swept away with the morning coffee, but rather breezes in and out of your unconscious for at least a few hours, but sometimes a few days.  When I took a course in altered stated of consciousness in university, during our discussion of dreams, my professor said that there are some dreams that mean something and should be paid attention to, and there are others that are just left over garbage that we typically do not remember.  Or if we do remember them upon rising, they are quickly forgotten.

I would also add that from my experience even the "garbage" dreams have a high level of memory stickiness if they are highly emotionally charged.  Although, perhaps that would remove them from the "garbage" category as the high emotional value could be the sign that we should be paying attention.

Nevertheless, the dream I had last night involved my friend's brother.  Him and I are not close at all and never have been, and yet here he was, the star of the 4am show.  As with most dreams, the details are sketchy but the plot line involved some sort of Skytrain-like trip and most importantly a Blue Jays game that I went to with this fellow when his friend cancelled last minute.  Throughout this dream there was this underlying feeling of flirtatiousness and playfulness that, once we were seated in the baseball stadium, quickly turned to be undeniably sexually charged.  It felt, like a speeding train that couldn't be stopped, and not giving into it at that moment was just delaying the inevitable.  It seemed like I was at the threshold of giving in.  The moment of my final decision of whether to proceed with this physical affair was almost at hand.  Then I woke up.  I don't know whether people actually talk like this, but "in the movies" this is often how forbidden acts of passion are described; something that can't be controlled and will not cease until the deed is done. 

I am not about to start getting into what I think this dream "meant" as I am not sure it has a meaning at all and I also have no intention of making myself extremely uncomfortable around my friend's brother by discovering some weird suppressed high school fantasy, but I will say that I have been feeling like a teenage girl experiencing her first crush all day...and I kind of like it!

The Maiden Voyage

Since I took my blog name from this article I think it only fair that I write my inaugural post about it. I read this when it first came out and practically fell out of my chair laughing. I was at work. I had to keep it quiet. It was difficult.

The article is called "How do you solve a problem like IKEA: All I wanted was a bed. What I got was a Kafkaesque nightmare" by Craig Davidson. You can find it here:

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/10/19/ikea_nightmare

Just a sample of the author's funny-isms:
"A portrait hangs beside a model bedroom. The man in the photo is identified as Lars Engman, Ikea’s design director. He wears a beige turtleneck and a supercilious smile. You'd think he's staring over ice-clad fjords in smug contemplation of the wildly profitable shell game he's playing with gullible shoppers.
Would you believe people buy this wacky stuff? I picture him saying. It's so weird! (Except Lars says it in a Scandinavian accent: Vould joo believe people buy zis vacky schtuff? It's zo veird!)
Not only are you constricted to the path, there are arrows to make sure you go the right way: forward. No arrows point backward. There is something mildly threatening about this. Why can’t I go backward?
Alvays forvard, not backvard. Nevah back!
An authoritarian tone creeps into Lars’ voice. Frankly, he sounds dictatorial.
If joo valk backvards vee vill haff no choice but to unleash evil vood sprites who liff in Schvedish forest, unt zey vill eat your belly guts! Ah! Ah!"


I was thoroughly entertained. The author mentions at the outset that he is a fellow Toronto-dweller. By the end of the article I am imagining him and I hanging out at a local pub...him amusing me with his wit and me keeping up with my share of puns and intelligent humorous remarks. This is quickly followed by a period of self-doubt during which I come to the conclusion that said author would not find me in the least bit funny and that my attempts at being funny in that high-pressure situation to impress would be the equivalent of a fifth-grader telling knock-knock jokes at Hugh Hefner's roast.
I opt to keep the "nouveau shanty" bit in mind for future usage and get back to work.