Lies that Encourage Procrastination: Don’t Delay, Read This Today!
By Tina Budeweit-Weeks
The CEDRIC theme for March is ‘Procrastination’ and how we deal with it as we journey towards wholeness and balance. When we chronically procrastinate, we are cheating ourselves and delaying the evolution that will contribute to the success of our efforts. The world around us lures us to stay in denial, but part of taking back the power of our success is to become more vigilant with the products that we use in our day to day process.
It might seem to be advantageous to blindly barrel on and start halfway through the process by letting our eating habits remain the same as we realize that ‘Food is not the problem’ but its still necessary to do the work needed that accompanies dealing with past issues, and that is to address the fact that the world around us is not as it would seem. Look at the instant oatmeal in your cupboards. It was purchased in an effort to eat healthy, but the purchase occurred in haste and the label wasn’t read before it was tossed into the cart. Now in hindsight, take down that box and assess its contents. Realize that, a box of real oats takes the same time to prepare, and you are more aware of what you added to whole real oats. Can you say the same for that box of instant breakfast that lauds how it promotes good health? Do you need all the highly refined additives that keep the ingredients fresh on the grocer’s shelves? Where you would add REAL butter, sugar and milk, reconstituted skim milk and artificial sugar and butter-like substances pretend to be just as good while harming us in the long run by causing our bodies to stockpile toxins until critical mass is reached. Everywhere we turn today we are besieged with pleas to accept data at face value. A friend used to joke with me “If it’s on TV, it must be true!’ We are expected to take the information that is produced before our eyes as fact and to not question the integrity of the sources that disseminate this information. From the TV’s ad campaigns, magazine ads, reality shows espousing the ‘true beauty’ of an individual and from other sources of authority in our lives, we are expected to take it all with a spoonful of sugar and stay optimistic. And for heaven’s sake, don’t question what’s in that sugar! So where does that leave us? It’s hard not to come off as a paranoid idealist when it takes me three hours to get through grocery shopping that used to take twenty minutes because its in my best interest to study every label as if my life depended on it. Which it does. All around us, the so-called authorities of every retail industry make claims that we are to accept without question and as a result, put our hard earned money down and not worry our little heads about it. Speaking of our little heads, take for example the hair dye commercials that use starlets from Desperate Housewives as the authority for hair, who admonish us about our tell-tale roots, and then encourage us to accept the ‘natural’ ingredients added to their chemical hair dye soup so that our hair will look like the star’s. Does no one realize that a star who pulls in a few G-notes for every performance would NEVER deign to allow some cheap, over-the-counter hair dye on their expensive tresses? Here we are, talking about chemicals that would be banned in wiser countries, applied for an extended period within inches of our brains, that we are led to accept as a benign substance. Ask yourself, ‘Why, within moments of putting this shampoo on my scalp, can I taste it in my mouth?’ and then use that as inspiration to seek another kind of less invasive shampoo when you’re in the store. Its not SUPPOSED to be ingested by our skin to that level of insidious absorption! There’s that Pampers commercial that admonishes us for allowing third world children to suffer and in response to the problem, they are providing a shot of preventative vaccines to a third world child for every pack of Pampers that you buy. What kind of fools do they take us for? First of all, they are promoting a product that is unsustainable by any measure of planetary upkeep, a product that not only fills our landfills but will take thousands of years to break down; Disposable diapers not only absorb the detritus from an infant, but also leeches an infant’s skin for moisture as it has no way of discerning, liquid is liquid. The makers of this product are doing the slight of hand when they turn the viewers focus onto the 3rd world woes of infants so as to take the heat off the fact that their product is harmful to infants AND environmentally destructive. If people were conscious enough to worry about the vaccines needed by 3rd world infants, then they are likely conscious enough to understand that cloth diapering is the only acceptable method and would never lower themselves to take on the enormous environmental footprint that disposable diapering leaves behind. Clothing companies tell us that the sizes are universal, however, why is it when I’m shopping, as a woman of size, clothes that fit will vary between an 18 to a 4X. And as far as the large women’s clothing industry goes, how is it that a company can say that it supports the needs of large size women while all along they are depicting mannequins who have bodies smaller than the clothes the store sells? And lastly, the food industry is an enormous part of the lie. When I started learning about nutrition as I was raising my first child in the early 80’s, I was able to buy a product and read a label that I could understand. Every year, people feed tons of sugar to their kids unerringly. They feel that if Chef Boy Ar Dee says its good for you, it is. Remember that the good Chef is actually a patsy for the corporation that wants your money, and don’t believe a word he says. Now the labels are written in scientific jargon and can contain any number of unpronounceable chemicals and additives all while professing to be ‘natural’. How natural is a soup that contains 40% sweetening that isn’t even sugar but a horrendous chemical that is comprised of syrup, fungus and a bacteria? As one friend says, ‘cyanide is natural too!’ Ask yourself just how nutritious are the highly refined food products found in the centre aisles of the supermarket? And what about the trusted outer aisles that contain vegetables, fruit, fresh baked breads, dairy and meat? How much do you trust that washing your fruit and vegetables will actually rid it of the pesticide residue that the growers deem needed to make the fruit appear perfect for the consumer? What is in the antibiotics fed to the chicken you plan on feeding the family? Have these cows been fed meal that consists of the brain stem matter of their companions in steerage? Yes, we live in a world that is spun from lies. From the newspaper that greets us at the door each morning with its overblown conspiracy theories and tales of woe, from its articles that put a certain spin on information to lead the reader down a path of its, not your, choosing, to ads that encourage us to deny accepting ourselves as naturally beautiful, we are constantly fed a ration of ‘bull. Ads belabour us for not being more thin, more beautiful, better dressed, driving a better vehicle. From start to finish, where the last thing we see on tv at night before we turn out the lights are ads for rapid weight loss if we just ingest these new drugs, that expendable commandment espousing truth is ignored as nothing sells better than the ‘sizzle’ of seemingly reliable facts that are anything but. How does one deal with a personal ethics barometer of integrity when all around them, lies are the accepted discourse of the material world? My solution is to become a skeptic. Doubt everything until proven otherwise. And if it involves being in or on our bodies, be double doubtful. This is the temple that houses your spirit and don’t be so quick to undermine its success by accepting the word of strangers motivated by greed as truth. Investigate the ingredients you find on the boxes of prepared foods in your cupboards. If you can’t understand it, don’t eat it, and don’t feed it to your family or pets either! Ask your grocer where products are made, she might know more about the sources of the ingredients because she is the one who brings the products into the store in the first place. Most of all, research, research, research. Knowledge is power and today’s world brings true knowledge closer to our fingertips than ever with the advent of the internet. Put that questionable ingredient into an internet search engine and read every entry on the topic for a few pages. Then decide what you want to conclude from the array of insights you just garnered. Sodium Laureth Sulphate is a good one to start with. Read the entries on this toxic carcinogen that is in literally every soap product in your home. Its’ history as engine degreaser is forgotten as it is in everything from baby soap to toothpaste, to your favourite brand name bath gel. Like high fructose corn syrup, it extends the product by acting as filler and also extends its shelf life when added to a product. It is also a ‘suds’ inducer, the factor that assumes consumers need bubbles to believe a soap works all while having some pretty disastrous effects on the vulnerable who have issues around their already compromised immune systems. When we begin to refocus our lives to accept our past and learn from it, we move on and become more positive with our future. Part of taking responsibility for the ‘new us’ is to watch what goes in and on us. Everyone knows that the world today is an unfamiliar place that is filled with dangers and pitfalls. The obvious things that we should be afraid of, crime, corruption, global warming etc. are used as distractions (fear propaganda, like the Bush mandate to address the ‘Axis of Evil’ every 10 days in the media to keep the population opiated) while the industry slips questionable ingredients and chemicals into us, just under our radar. We just want deodorant, not lymph node cancer or advanced dementia! But by looking on the label, the aluminum that is inside that pretty pink gel indicates that all is not as it seems. As we work our ways back for imbalance to harmony, take back your personal power by educating yourself about products that promote your health and the future of the environment. Let the lies act as warning flags as you go through your day, waving red flags of inspiration that lead you to wholeness by AVOIDING that which you used to accept blindly. Believe in yourself. Question everything else.Tina Budeweit-Weeks is a member of the CEDRIC Success Team in the role of staff writer and executive assistant for Michelle Morand. Her philosophy has always been one of self-nurturance and dignity. In support of the complex difficulties clients may experience around regaining a healthy balance, Tina’s writing is designed to sympathize, support, encourage and inform. Although there are many similarities in Tina’s process, she is not a client, but a hard working, behind-the-scenes member of the team, dedicated to helping the CEDRIC Centre stay current and effective.
Look at the instant oatmeal in your cupboards. It was purchased in an effort to eat healthy, but the purchase occurred in haste and the label wasn't read before it was tossed into the cart. Now in hindsight, take down that box and assess its contents. Realize that, a box of real oats takes the same time to prepare, and you are more aware of what you added to whole real oats. Can you say the same for that box of instant breakfast that lauds how it promotes good health? Do you need all the highly refined additives that keep the ingredients fresh on the grocer's shelves? Where you would add REAL butter, sugar and milk, reconstituted skim milk and artificial sugar and butter-like substances pretend to be just as good while harming us in the long run by causing our bodies to stockpile toxins until critical mass is reached. Everywhere we turn today we are besieged with pleas to accept data at face value. A friend used to joke with me "If it's on TV, it must be true!' We are expected to take the information that is produced before our eyes as fact and to not question the integrity of the sources that disseminate this information. From the TV's ad campaigns, magazine ads, reality shows espousing the ‘true beauty' of an individual and from other sources of authority in our lives, we are expected to take it all with a spoonful of sugar and stay optimistic. And for heaven's sake, don't question what's in that sugar! So where does that leave us? It's hard not to come off as a paranoid idealist when it takes me three hours to get through grocery shopping that used to take twenty minutes because its in my best interest to study every label as if my life depended on it. Which it does. All around us, the so-called authorities of every retail industry make claims that we are to accept without question and as a result, put our hard earned money down and not worry our little heads about it. Speaking of our little heads, take for example the hair dye commercials that use starlets from Desperate Housewives as the authority for hair, who admonish us about our tell-tale roots, and then encourage us to accept the ‘natural' ingredients added to their chemical hair dye soup so that our hair will look like the star's. Does no one realize that a star who pulls in a few G-notes for every performance would NEVER deign to allow some cheap, over-the-counter hair dye on their expensive tresses? Here we are, talking about chemicals that would be banned in wiser countries, applied for an extended period within inches of our brains, that we are led to accept as a benign substance. Ask yourself, ‘Why, within moments of putting this shampoo on my scalp, can I taste it in my mouth?' and then use that as inspiration to seek another kind of less invasive shampoo when you're in the store. Its not SUPPOSED to be ingested by our skin to that level of insidious absorption! There's that Pampers commercial that admonishes us for allowing third world children to suffer and in response to the problem, they are providing a shot of preventative vaccines to a third world child for every pack of Pampers that you buy. What kind of fools do they take us for? First of all, they are promoting a product that is unsustainable by any measure of planetary upkeep, a product that not only fills our landfills but will take thousands of years to break down; Disposable diapers not only absorb the detritus from an infant, but also leeches an infant's skin for moisture as it has no way of discerning, liquid is liquid. The makers of this product are doing the slight of hand when they turn the viewers focus onto the 3rd world woes of infants so as to take the heat off the fact that their product is harmful to infants AND environmentally destructive. If people were conscious enough to worry about the vaccines needed by 3rd world infants, then they are likely conscious enough to understand that cloth diapering is the only acceptable method and would never lower themselves to take on the enormous environmental footprint that disposable diapering leaves behind. Clothing companies tell us that the sizes are universal, however, why is it when I'm shopping, as a woman of size, clothes that fit will vary between an 18 to a 4X. And as far as the large women's clothing industry goes, how is it that a company can say that it supports the needs of large size women while all along they are depicting mannequins who have bodies smaller than the clothes the store sells? And lastly, the food industry is an enormous part of the lie. When I started learning about nutrition as I was raising my first child in the early 80's, I was able to buy a product and read a label that I could understand. Every year, people feed tons of sugar to their kids unerringly. They feel that if Chef Boy Ar Dee says its good for you, it is. Remember that the good Chef is actually a patsy for the corporation that wants your money, and don't believe a word he says. Now the labels are written in scientific jargon and can contain any number of unpronounceable chemicals and additives all while professing to be ‘natural'. How natural is a soup that contains 40% sweetening that isn't even sugar but a horrendous chemical that is comprised of syrup, fungus and a bacteria? As one friend says, 'cyanide is natural too!' Ask yourself just how nutritious are the highly refined food products found in the centre aisles of the supermarket? And what about the trusted outer aisles that contain vegetables, fruit, fresh baked breads, dairy and meat? How much do you trust that washing your fruit and vegetables will actually rid it of the pesticide residue that the growers deem needed to make the fruit appear perfect for the consumer? What is in the antibiotics fed to the chicken you plan on feeding the family? Have these cows been fed meal that consists of the brain stem matter of their companions in steerage? Yes, we live in a world that is spun from lies. From the newspaper that greets us at the door each morning with its overblown conspiracy theories and tales of woe, from its articles that put a certain spin on information to lead the reader down a path of its, not your, choosing, to ads that encourage us to deny accepting ourselves as naturally beautiful, we are constantly fed a ration of ‘bull. Ads belabour us for not being more thin, more beautiful, better dressed, driving a better vehicle. From start to finish, where the last thing we see on tv at night before we turn out the lights are ads for rapid weight loss if we just ingest these new drugs, that expendable commandment espousing truth is ignored as nothing sells better than the ‘sizzle' of seemingly reliable facts that are anything but. How does one deal with a personal ethics barometer of integrity when all around them, lies are the accepted discourse of the material world? My solution is to become a skeptic. Doubt everything until proven otherwise. And if it involves being in or on our bodies, be double doubtful. This is the temple that houses your spirit and don't be so quick to undermine its success by accepting the word of strangers motivated by greed as truth. Investigate the ingredients you find on the boxes of prepared foods in your cupboards. If you can't understand it, don't eat it, and don't feed it to your family or pets either! Ask your grocer where products are made, she might know more about the sources of the ingredients because she is the one who brings the products into the store in the first place. Most of all, research, research, research. Knowledge is power and today's world brings true knowledge closer to our fingertips than ever with the advent of the internet. Put that questionable ingredient into an internet search engine and read every entry on the topic for a few pages. Then decide what you want to conclude from the array of insights you just garnered. Sodium Laureth Sulphate is a good one to start with. Read the entries on this toxic carcinogen that is in literally every soap product in your home. Its' history as engine degreaser is forgotten as it is in everything from baby soap to toothpaste, to your favourite brand name bath gel. Like high fructose corn syrup, it extends the product by acting as filler and also extends its shelf life when added to a product. It is also a ‘suds' inducer, the factor that assumes consumers need bubbles to believe a soap works all while having some pretty disastrous effects on the vulnerable who have issues around their already compromised immune systems. When we begin to refocus our lives to accept our past and learn from it, we move on and become more positive with our future. Part of taking responsibility for the ‘new us' is to watch what goes in and on us. Everyone knows that the world today is an unfamiliar place that is filled with dangers and pitfalls. The obvious things that we should be afraid of, crime, corruption, global warming etc. are used as distractions (fear propaganda, like the Bush mandate to address the 'Axis of Evil' every 10 days in the media to keep the population opiated) while the industry slips questionable ingredients and chemicals into us, just under our radar. We just want deodorant, not lymph node cancer or advanced dementia! But by looking on the label, the aluminum that is inside that pretty pink gel indicates that all is not as it seems. As we work our ways back for imbalance to harmony, take back your personal power by educating yourself about products that promote your health and the future of the environment. Let the lies act as warning flags as you go through your day, waving red flags of inspiration that lead you to wholeness by AVOIDING that which you used to accept blindly. Believe in yourself. Question everything else.<-->