Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Suggested serving

I have been recently busy writing recipes. This is not about recipes, so don't ask me to share with ya. What this is about is that while busily occupied with these gastronomic endeavors I noticed something that made me wonder. On almost all these recipes there is a place where they tell you how many servings. So, you should equally divide it into that many servings. From there I went the next step and checked out the packages of prepared food stuff (boxed, canned, jarred and frozen) On every single one of them it also told you what a suggested serving was. (Some of them were a complete surprise - like the suggested serving for most dry cereals is 2/3 of a cup. Check that out in a bowl.) Anyway, after I checked out the food stuffs I started checking other stuff. And I ended up in the bathroom where I do most of my reading anyway and saw that the shampoos and other lotions all had directions for use. All except one item. You guessed it, the toilet paper. It comes in those neat little rolls with all the perforations on them. The package refers to them as sheets, like how many sheets to the roll. But no instructions as to how many sheets to a portion. Maybe it depends on the job you're using it for. I'm told that women use different amounts for #1s and #2s. However! Wouldn't it be logical to assume that where the manufacturer took the time and effort to perforate these little sheets that that would suggest that they considered one sheet a serving? Have you ever tried to clean up a #2 with one sheet? Even a triple ply rating would be scary. So, if anyone has instructions stashed away somewhere, please share. There are many of us out here wondering.

Suppressed?

Do you often, occasionally or rarely feel suppressed in your attempts to achieve or be recognized? If your answer is often or occasionally, do you find yourself blaming someone for this? That there are certain individuals who have held you back for so long that you now believe yourself to be incapable of achievement or recognition? Have you rationalized as to why these individuals would feel the need to suppress your attempts? If you have and/or are doing so now, you are not alone. Many people who feel that they deserve more have found at least one person, usually several, to blame for their underachievement. And in truth, there is at least one person to blame. That one person who has the power to make them feel inadequate, unsure or inferior is none other than their own self. This no doubt was initiated by some small failure in early life, which, not recognized was allowed to permeate and amass to leave the individual permanently fixated on their inabilities and not allow them to move forward on their abilities. This fixation on failure is not prominent in conscious thought but very prominent in the subconscious.
Is there a way to overcome this fixation? I believe there is; however, one must first face the fact that they are responsible for their own shortcomings. The realization that one can fail at many things and still be a success in life is the key. No one is good at everything. We all have our shortcomings, so we should concentrate on being the best that we can on the things that we are good at. This is a sure confidence builder. And self-confidence is what puts you at the top.