(In case anyone's curious about the stuff--here's a review a wrote a while back for another blog.)

Years ago, in my quest to discover the best diet for optimal health, I came across a meal-shake called The Ultimate Meal.  It really is amazing stuff; it's vegan of course, and it satisfies my hunger for several hours, eliminates my need to take vitamins and other supplements, and it just makes me feel good after it eat it.

But it tastes awful at first. My early attempts at eating it were not pretty. I would, literally, gag as it hit my throat. The apple and banana that you mix with it were not enough to cover the pea and spirulina flavors, and they actually made the texture worse. The package recommends you chew the drink to get it to digest fully and properly. Yeah right, I thought.

After two breakfasts of forcing the stuff down then immediately rinsing my mouth to get the taste out, I thought I'd try to alter the recipe. Before starting the Ultimate Meal, my post-workout breakfast had been a smoothie of peanut butter, bananas and soy milk. Peanut butter's flavor can mask anything, right?

Turns out, no. Though my new recipe had a much better consistency, the flavor was just as awful. I shoved the half-full can of UM into the cupboard, promising myself I'd return to it after a few days off.

Days turned into years.

Several months ago, I decided I was ready to try it again. The original can of UM, still in the cupboard, was quite expired by the time I retrieved it (this according to the label- there was no perceptible difference) so I threw it out and walked to Whole Foods to buy more. I decided to start with the ten-serving mini can. It cost almost thirty dollars. I'd forgotten how expensive it was.

The cost, however, turned out to be a good thing. It was motivation enough to get through the can, and this time I tried another recipe. Instead of adding an apple and banana to the mix, I add applesauce and soy milk. This greatly improves both the flavor and texture. Greatly. Though it did take a couple days of getting used to, I started to actually enjoy drinking, even chewing, my UM in the morning. I walked to the store and bought another small container, not yet ready to fully commit.

It did amazing things for my health. I just felt happier when I drank it. And more energetic. But the biggest change showed up in my shower drain and vacuum cleaner. My hair has been thinning quite a bit over the last few years, and after a couple weeks on UM it had virtually stopped. My husband even noticed the change, not on my head but on the ground, where it used to land when it fell out.

Now that I'd learned to love the health benefits and learned to live with the taste, the only barrier was the cost. The large sized container, with thirty servings, costs about $70 at the store. Even though that works out to only a little more than $2 a meal, it seems like a lot to spend on a can of powder. Fortunately, you can get it for much cheaper online. Amazon.com currently has it for about $40 for the large can.

Although it takes work to get used to eating it, I highly recommend The Ultimate Meal. My goal is to eventually establish a habit of eating it for all meals/snacks except dinner. I believe new habits are best built gradually, so I'll continue with just breakfast until that becomes comfortable and then I'll add on. I'll post more about habit building later. Until then, enjoy your Ultimate Meal.

In his book Constructive Living, David K. Reynolds says that the Japanese language uses the same word for 'self focused' and 'selfish.' "The word is 'jiko-chushin.' It means, literally, the self in the middle of the heart--the ego in the center of the mind" (p. 21). So the shy person on the bus who worries everyone is watching her is no different from the obnoxious guy who slips past the old lady to snag the last seat. They are equally self-centered.

While my English-speaking mind can't (and doesn't want to!) fully equate these two characters, I can see what Reynolds is getting at. The person who is shy around women, or self-conscious about his body image, or afraid to confront his boss about a raise has an unhealthy and unrealistic view that he is the center of the universe. That this view causes him suffering instead of pleasure is secondary.

My worry when I read this was that in striving for personal development, I was being jiko-chushin. After all, how can you develop yourself without focusing on yourself? The answer is, of course, you can't, not fully. I have to pay attention to my choices and behaviors if I want to make healthy ones. No one can live an independent life if they remove their own needs completely from their thoughts.

I think what it comes down to is motivation. Why am I making this healthy choice or performing that positive action? Am I doing it to achieve my own happiness? Or am I doing it for the benefit of others?

According to Reynolds, if what we're striving for is our own happiness, we'll never reach it. True happiness comes from removing ourselves from the center of our hearts, from seeking the comfort and happiness of others.  Easy to say, difficult to do, but I'll try to keep it in mind as I go through my day.

My husband and I have decided we're ready to sell our condo in Berkeley and move to someplace where we can live more sustainably, preferably in our own home in a community with like-minded people.

Enter the ecovillage.  It's a great concept: a small town that captures its own water and uses/reuses it appropriately, uses solar or wind power for electricity, has a huge permaculture garden, perhaps a small school or homeschool collective, several small alternatively-built residences and a way to generate whatever little money is needed to keep the community running.

The problem is, most of these are in rural areas.  This has several downfalls, including the fact that their remoteness diminishes their publicity.  How can we spread the word about sustainability if no one can find us?  It also, as a model, encourages people to spread out, take up more space in the world. 

Cities, if done right, really are a good thing.  The Urban Ecovillage Network notes:

"Environmentalists have long recognized the need for green development in cities. Urban density helps preserve farmland and wilderness from human development. It also lends itself to large-scale cooperative ventures, such as public transportation, pedestrian communities, and energy conservation: e.g., heating apartments or whole apartment buildings instead of single-family homes."

Finding and urban ecovillage is hard.  The Urban Ecovillage Network lists four: LA, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Detroit.  Creating one is even harder.  Consider the San Francisco area, where I live.  The first hurdle comes with the cost of purchasing the land.  No easy task with the cost of real estate so high.  Next comes working with zoning and planning to build/retrofit in an ecologically sound way.  Again, difficult. 

The LA ecovillage rose up out of the '92 riots, the others out of struggling industry towns.  Must we wait for a disaster in order to finally achieve our dream?  Maybe.  Though people are trying to find other ways.  Rather than create an urban village, several people have formed co-housing communities and are working to add solar power and small gardens to their homes. 

Another group, in San Mateo, CA (near San Francisco) has gone a step further.  They have purchased two four-unit apartment buildings, added solar power and a giant garden.  They're working on a gray-water system (though this is difficult in a city), etc.  It's a great start.  They've already got three families established as members, and they're looking to add more.  My husband and I visited them last weekend and are considering applying for a spot.  You can check them out at: http://www.greensolutions.org/smcc.htm

We'll see how it goes.  It's a big problem with many possible sollutions.  Please leave comments or questions.  I'd love to get a discussion going on this!

I've noticed that Buddhism and mindfulness are fairly common threads here on zaadz, but few people (no people?) seemed interested in or, perhaps, aware of Naikan.

It is yet another system for cultivating mindfulness, but it's one that I've found particularly wonderful.  It's a form of Buddhist-based Japanese psychology and one of the foundations of Constructive Living.  It is also very simple. 

To perform Naikan, you reflect on three questions:
1- What have others done for me?
2- What have I done for others?
3- What troubles have I caused to others?

You could spend your life thinking about these questions and not even come close to finding all the answers.  I try to spend ten minutes each day for each question, reflecting on the previous twenty-four hours.  At least for questions one and three, I never get through them all.

Try this: sit down with a very simple meal, an raw piece of fruit for example, and reflect on these three questions.  Delve deep.  If you got the fruit from the store, consider the person who worked at the checkout, the person who stocked the produce, the person who delivered it, the gas they had to used to drive to the store and its impact on the environment and the beings in it, the farmers who worked to grow it, the people who cultivated the seeds over time, etc. 

A simple practice, for sure, but the way it changes your life can be profound. 

If you try this, I'd love to hear back about your experience.  I'm also open to answering any questions you have about Naikan and how to learn more.  Feel free to leave comments or to mail me directly.

I usually keep my veganism (along with my other -isms) pretty quiet.  I've learned that confronting people with it often leads to heated discussions that leave both parties unhappy.

Nonetheless, the topic does come up fairly often--whenever I'm invited to dinner, for example, at office lunches (when I was still in an office), and, of course, at every extended family gathering.  Even after six years of Christmases, people continue to ask about it.

That's fine with me. I like answering questions when people ask them.  It's opened the doors for several people to go veg, even vegan.  But I find that so many people respond with defensiveness when they learn I don't eat/wear/use animal products.  It's as if they think my personal decisions will soon be encroaching on theirs.  "I don't care; steak tastes good!" they say, or something along those lines.  Even the more open-minded people often reflect this attitude in their choice of words.  "What are you allowed to eat?"  "Can you eat chocolate?"

My answer is always the same: "I can eat whatever I want.  I choose not to eat animal products (and, by the way, chocolate comes from a plant)."

For me, veganism is about freedoms, not restrictions.  I'm free to have peace of mind, knowing that I'm living in accordance with my own ethical standards.  It's opened me to new ideas and helped me meet new people (like all the wonderful zaadzsters!).  It's also made dining so much more exciting.  Since going vegan, I've eaten and learned to cook Ethiopian, Indian and Thai dishes that I never would have discovered.  I've learned to make wonderful, creative, and even healthy desserts that I would never have tried otherwise.  And, finally, it has become so integrated with my life that I simply do not consider it on a day-to-day basis.  It is simply a part of a happy, healthy me.

I would encourage others thinking about going vegan to take these freedoms into consideration, but I think for now I'll just keep quiet.

People have been asking about my forming organization business and how it is connected to the idea of Voluntary Simplicity.  So here, in brief, is my answer, copied  from the reply I gave to Turnleaf when he asked.

It comes down to the more-is-better attitude that most Americans seem to have.  That attitude is, I think, the root of so many of our problems.  We see it everywhere:

Value meals are making people fat.
Rampant consumerism is pouring waste into our environments.
The need to get more and more stuff is driving people into debt and forcing them to work long hours at jobs they hate.

People keep turning to these things: food, new clothes, a bigger house, to find happiness because they don't know where else to look.  But it's hard to change old habits, and in this case maybe even hard to think you'll be happier if you do.

That's where my organizing comes in.  Most of it is de-cluttering and learning how to keep yourself from buying more that you don't need, perhaps downsizing to a smaller home or making room for a growing family.  It's about recognizing your patterns so that you can naturally shift toward healthier ones.  For me, it ties in perfectly with the practices in Your Money or Your Life and also with Constructive Living.  Basically, you do first, and healthy attitudes will follow.  My job is to help people do.

If you have any questions about voluntary simplicity, constructive living or any of these topics, please ask.  I'd be happy to answer.

On the face of this question, the answer has to be yes.  Non-consumerism is not about consuming nothing (we'd die) but about consuming less.  To me, it's about replacing our more-is-better attitude with a just-enough-is-better one.  A capitalist society could flourish even if all its members practiced these beliefs.

But right now, not everyone does.  Not even close.  People like to spend.  They seem not to mind sinking into debt.   Is it unethical for me to take advantage of this?  Can I invest in the stock market knowing (hoping) that I will benefit from others' excessive spending?  What about working for or starting a company that manufactures things that people buy excessively, like clothing?  People do need some clothes, so surely this company isn't inherently pro-excessive-consumerism.

I have a dream of investing my money to the point that I can live off the income, so that my husband and I no longer have to work, and we can spend our time exclusively doing work we love (whether we get paid or not).  I'm happy with this goal, and I think I'm happy with the way I'm going about it. 

But the question remains in the back of my mind.  I live in a world of rapacious consumerism.  Can I ethically use this to my benefit?

Browsing through the Zaadz pods on Friday, I happened upon a post (which I've now lost) that contained a link to Jennifer Avery's  life-coaching website.  It contains a ton of information, including a book list, which points to the book The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Aron. 

My first thought was that it was all a bunch of nonsense.  Sensitivity was not highly regarded by my parents, and I grew up pretty much agreeing with their attitude.  However, the book and the articles on the website continued to pull me in.  I've been highly sensitive all my life, and I've been somewhat ashamed of it for nearly as long.  The thought that I didn't need to be ashamed, that I could make it work for me held my attention.

So I checked to see if my library carried it.  They did, and it was on the shelf (a rare occurence) so I ran down, checked it out, and started reading.  I'm about halfway through.

So far, this book has heightened my sensitivity (or perhaps my awareness of it or my allowance of it) which has been an uncomfortable experience.  I'm not sure what to make of this.  On the one hand, I'm trying to believe that my sensitivity can be a good thing.  On the other hand, deep down, I'm so sure that it's not.  My mind is pulling me in two directions.

I think this pull is okay, at least I want to think so.  I do believe it's good to be uncomfortable sometimes; growth often follows discomfort.

However, I don't have complete faith in the book: for the most part, I don't like the solutions Aron offers for dealing with this discomfort.  She is a Western psychologist, and as such she favors techniques that involve working through your feelings, imagining yourself as an infant, etc.  I don't find these techniques helpful; in fact, I think they can even cause harm. 

Morita therapy, one of the bases for Constructive Living tells us that we cannot change our feelings directly by the will.  The only thing we can control is our own behavior.  Dwelling on our emotions, therefore, gets us nowhere.  I agree.

That said, the book so far has made many good points and has, generally, been very validating and encouraging.  I'll try to post an update when I finish reading perhaps my opinion will change.  But I think I'll probably keep what advice I like and ignore the rest.  Accepting my sensitivity needn't mean dwelling on my feelings (or even 'working through them'), but it can mean, as she says, paying better attention to my own needs and modifying my behavior accordingly.  This is something I've been trying to do with Constructive Living anyway, but it's helpful to frame it in the Highly Sensitive Person perspective.  We'll see how it goes.

I may have the opportunity to travel to China in a few months (the specific location and time is yet undecided), and my consideration of whether or not to go has drawn up many questions.  Among them:  how can an environmentalist fly in good conscience?

Travel to other countries and experience of other cultures certainly seems to have value.  At the very least, such travel is good for individuals (we humans thrive on novelty), but it must also be true that travel leads to knowledge, and knowledge leads to understanding and cooperation.

Not that I was planning a military assault on China any time soon.  Still, there's no denying the environmental impact of air travel, especially when compared to my usual practices of walking, taking public transit, trying to buy local, etc.  And my trip to China is unlikely to create positive change on any large scale.

But there are many beautiful things in China, much to see and learn that I could not get from simply reading a book.  If I find these things, if I experience them, am I justified in going?

Well, I've finished the Highly Sensitive Person book that I started on Friday.  I'd say my initial opinion of it was about right for me, though at the end, the author does discuss the benefits of cognitive-behavioral therapy (in addition to interpersonal therapy, medication, etc.), so although she still leans toward the western psychology models I don't like, at least she's open to more rational/direct approaches.

Most of the advice on using your sensitivity centered around learning to give yourself personal time, knowing when to push and when to avoid overstimulating situations, finding a suitable job, etc., and it's pretty much all stuff I've figured out on my own.  Again, not super helpful but nicely validating.

The chapter that had the most impact for me was the one on falling in love and developing friendships.  Specifically, she said that many HSPs avoid relationships altogether, citing several cases where people had answered their sensitivity by doing so.    She quotes one woman as saying, "I finally got med out of my life, so I'm not tried by that anymore" (139).  Though I've been lucky enough to find a wonderful romantic partner, I don't have anyone else I consider a close friend.  Part of this, I realize, is because I've given up on women friends altogether.  I've had many really close friendships fall apart in a dramatic way, and I've always blamed this on the fact that the friendships were with women (and attitude I've inherited from my mother).

Anyhow, the author discusses the benefits of befriending other HSPs.  I think she's right, and I'm going to try to let go of this fear of befriending women, seek out some other HSPs, and see where it leads.

I want to welcome anyone interested in discussing Voluntary Simplicity in more depth to join the new VS pod where we'll discuss everything from scaling down our possessions to shrinking our ecological footprint to gaining financial independence. 

I'd love it if you stopped by!

An important and potentially overlooked aspect of voluntary simplicity is the simplifying of our time.  When this is considered, it seems usually to be framed in terms of money.  An article in this month's Harper's, entitled The Spirit of Disobedience puts it well.  The authors, comparing Thoreau to Marx say:

"It is the money-form, as Marx called it, that has captured and distorted a more human notion of time.  Time, for Homo economicus, is not 'the stream I go a-fishing in.'  It is a medium of exchange.  We trade our time for money.... The true cost of a thing, Thoreau shrewdly observes, condensing hundreds of pages of Marxist analysis to an epigram, is 'the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.'" (pg. 37)

This sounds a lot like what we get from Dominguez and and Robin in Your Money or Your Life.  They reframe money as "life-energy" and have the reader consider their actual hourly wage, factoring the costs of clothing, special meals, commuting, job-related illness, downtime required, etc.  In the end, many of us are devoting a lot of our lives to jobs we don't love.  The book encourages us to value our life-energy, both in seeking paid work that we do love and in pursuing unpaid interests that give us just as much a sense of purpose and satisfaction, pursuing, in effect, what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls Flow in his book by the same name, what turns out to be, basically, the Buddhist notion of mindfulness.

Most people do value money and connect with the notion of money as life-energy right away, but if these ideas are new to us, it can be daunting to think of changing our lives all at once.  Fortunately, as with all aspects of voluntary simplicity (and most aspects of life), we can make these changes gradually.  In future entries, I plan to discuss several small changes that have worked for me.  For now I'll start with one: I got rid of my TV.

This happened in steps.  I first eliminated cable, then cut back on my hours of watching, but it wasn't until I finally turned the TV off totally that I felt the change.  And it's been wonderful.  I read more books, spend more time with my husband, have more time to blog and generally have more time for Flow activities (many things can be Flow activities, but unless you are a TV writer or producer, watching TV will probably not be one of them).

I often hear people wish there were more hours in the day.  My answer is: kill your TV and there will be.

David over on the Voluntary Simplicity Pod was asking for suggestions on how to break old habits, so I thought I'd re-post something I'd written for another blog I kept a while back.  Enjoy:

The principle behind developing new, healthy habits is very simple: take small, comfortable steps until you reach your goal. The goal of weight loss is an excellent example of how this can work.

We all know that in order to lose weight, all we have to do is eat less and exercise more. Simple. The problem comes when people try to alter their habits suddenly, to go from sitting on the couch eating pizza and potato chips all evening to eating a small salad after spending hours at the gym. The change is too much of a shock to the system; very few people could keep up the diet for long.

This is why we see so many people turning to pills, drinks and other gimmicks to lose weight. Their willpower has failed them in the past, so they're turning to regiments that require no willpower, but these all fail them. People are spending a lot of money and seeing no long term results. But they're on the right track in rejecting willpower-based diet and exercise plans. People like to be comfortable, and these plans definitely are not that!

Comfort comes from taking small steps and not rushing to meet your goal. Instead of suddenly quitting all junk food and joining a gym, cut out just potato chips until you no longer miss them. Then cut out tortilla chips, then ice cream, etc. Take as long as you need to feel comfortable with your new way of eating. It took years to develop bad habits, and there's nothing wrong with taking years to develop good ones (unless the bad habits are life threatening). 

Start small so that you hardly feel the change, then when it's comfortable, push yourself a little further.  The process is slow, but at the end, you'll have made a big change without making a big effort. Being healthy will simply be a habit you've formed over time, and it will stick with you for the rest of your life.

[Edited to add: After writing this, I think that it's a bit reactive.  I've been making unhealthy food choices lately yet also striving for perfection though I know that too is unhealthy.  I think I let this internal battle voice itself in my blog.  The words are mostly meant for myself, and I think I needed to hear harsh words.  Please read Nancy's comment below for a gentler, more rational point of view.]

People seem fond of the phrase, "everything in moderation," but simple analysis will reveal this as bad advice:  A moderate amount of rat poison in my cup of tea will likely afford me no benefit. Just a little child molestation is probably not a good foundation for a satisfying life, certainly not for the child.

A better maxim is this: Be careful not to fall into all-or-nothing thinking.

If you quit smoking five years ago, and last night you smoked a cigarette at a party, this does not mean you have failed at quitting smoking.  But it also does not mean that that one cigarette was a good thing, as 'everything in moderation' would have you believe.  One cigarette is worse for you than no cigarettes.  It just is.

If you eat a battered, deep fried Snickers bar at the county fair, this does not mean that you have failed at your attempts to eat healthfully and should give up.  But it is also not true that that Snickers bar was good for you.  Yet this is what 'everything in moderation' would have you believe.

And this is true for any bad habit you're trying to break.

'Everything in Moderation' is an excuse people use to counter the guilt their all-or-nothing thinking causes them.  But the answer to this guilt is not to allow yourself 'small treats', it is to recognize the harm your unhealthy behaviors are causing you, accept that that behavior is now in the past and move on. 

This may not be easy to do, but the good things in life are rarely easy.

Several things are starting to come together.  I finally picked up The Singularity Is Near from the library yesterday.  I've just started reading it, but already it's got my mind spinning.  The ideas in it are not particularly new to me.  Though I never read The Age of Spiritual Machines, my husband has been talking about it for years.  That's number one.

Two is this: it's Springtime, and every Spring for the last five years or so, I've gotten the idea to try to become a raw foodist.  The longest I've stuck to the mostly-raw (80%+) thing is a couple of months, but every time I do it I feel so amazingly healthy.  Many raw foodists say this good feeling is caused by the enzymes, but another, more scientific (as opposed to spiritual, I suppose) bunch attribute it primarily to two things: calorie restriction and optimal nutrition.  

CRON.  You don't have to be a raw foodist to do it, though eating a lot of raw vegetables certainly seems like a good idea.  And the results in terms of longevity are very promising.  With CRON you can live a longer, healthier life, and if Kurzweil is right, you may be able to live as long as you want.  This certainly sounds worth it.  

Yesterday Nancy reminded me (this is number three) of two great questions to ask yourself when you make a decision.  My answer to both is 'yes'.  What reason do I have not to move forward?

The only answer I can come up with is fear, fear that I will disappoint people, particularly my parents, by doing yet another weird thing, particularly a weird thing with food.  I faced this when I went vegan, but I had my husband's support and a strong personal ethics to back me up, and I overcame the fear.

It seems that my husband is ready to adopt CRON with me, so the only remaining question is this.  If I can live for as long as I want, what good can I do for the world?  What can I do to make my life worth it?