One Love...

One love can lead to many more beautiful things.

Have you ever watched Last Holiday with Queen Latifah? Ok, storyline;

• Regular lady works in department store, where they treat their employees like crap. She bumps her head at work and is diagnosed with a terminal illness and only three weeks to live. Even though she led a simple, unfulfilled life, she kept a possibilities book. This possibilities book was a scrap book of things she would have liked to experience one day, such as going to the Grand Hotel Pupp (pronounced poop, lol), exquisite recipes and wedding photos of her and co-worker/slash secret crush-LL Cool J. Well you can't get all that done in three weeks, so she chose the Grand Hotel Poop, lol. Blah, blah, blah, everyone loves her, she gets in good with the big time chef (can't recall his name but he was fun) and brings good to whomever she comes into contact with. Ends up, she's misdiagnosed so she gets to fulfill another dream of marrying Lady's Love James and opens a restaurant, this is the biggie. Opening the restaurant was so great because she loves cooking.

At first, I just thought she loved food, like me. But she cultivated that love for cooking by appreciating other chefs creations and refining her own skills. This isn't going to be a "do what you love and make it your career" post. Yes, she did end up making her love her livelihood but it was how far her love for cooking took her.

From what I gather, the reason she wanted to go to the Grand Poop was because of her respect for the chef. While there, she dined with dignitaries, engaged in extreme sports and saved a life; half way across the world! Yeah, the Grand Hotel Pupp is in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. The big and far Czech!

I went through all of that to show you how important it is to love things and not selfishly. Queen Latifah loved sharing her cooking with others, even when she was on a diet and could only indulge in Lean Cuisine. She still cooked for others and cooked well, and she watched and respected other chefs. 

Loving something, purely, can open up opportunities to more beautiful things. By the way, according to my definition, you can't love something that is bad for you, that's called an addiction.

I don't know all the calculations on how loving something or someone wholeheartedly can bring you more wonderful experiences but I guarantee you it does. Try it and trust me. I bet you can't prove me wrong. : )

Little Red Book

Do you repeat the same offenses? Do you have any sins or bad habits that you resolve never to do again-until you do it again? Me too, I have a load of them. And then after I commit the infraction, I wish I hadn't. What can stop me/us? I am going to try using a temptation book. 

The temptation book should be small enough to carry around with you. Whenever you are about to do something questionable, jot it down into your temptation book first. Write the action, the rewards, the immediate and long term consequences of such an action. Read it out loud. From there, you should be able to weigh in on your temptations' worthiness. Are they worth the consequences? 


Let me know if this has worked for you? I'm just about to try it myself. For now, it will probably be filled with a lot of food temptations. I figure having to stop and write it into my little red book will slow me down in my tracks and shame me before I get to commit the sin.