RE3EL STANCE

There is something about mashed potatoes. Take a bunch of cheap potatoes, throw in way too much butter, a few hundred dashes of salt and garlic and pepper and, if you’re feeling especially carnivorous, some thick slab bacon (mmmm…bacon) and you transform potatoes into a gluttonous treat. And, what better day to indulge in a few too many mashed potatoes than Thanksgiving. After all, Thanksgiving is a day for excess (excess food, excess drink, excess sleep, etc…). But, this past Thanksgiving I was mid-bite of some yummy mashers when I realized it isn’t the excess that is great about Thanksgiving. Instead, it’s the yearly exercise in not being constrained by the many things that we are constrained by the rest of the year. We don’t watch what we eat. We don’t worry about falling asleep on the couch. We don’t limit our ability to get together with loved ones.

It gets me thinking…getting refreshed isn’t about having a day off from work but about getting rid of limitations to your thinking. So, doesn’t it only make sense that your rebel efforts should be hit with daily doses of limitless thinking and that your year should be filled with extended limitless adventures of your mind. So, as the mashed potatoes recipe goes back in the cupboard and eating over-indulgence takes a break, here are a few things you should do more of to help you shift your lack of limitations from your post-Thanksgiving waistline to your rebel mind:

1) Adventuring: Get away to places you haven’t been whether they are around the block or around the world.

2) Befriending: Befriend people that you admire so much they inspire you but think nothing like you

3) FREEstyling: Take days off from anything and everything that has anything and everything to do with work. Don’t check emails. Don’t check voice-mails. Don’t think about work.

4) Reading: Read, read, and then read some more. Read magazines. Read books. Read the internet. Read the newspaper. But, mix it up. Don’t limit yourself to reading the same things all the time. There are so many interesting things in the world to learn about.

5) “Reinventing”: Reinvent your life often. Change your schedules. Turn bad habits into good ones and good habits into other good ones. Change your hair. Change your interior design. Change your office location.

6) Exploring: Explore new kinds of cuisine. Explore new areas of your hometown. Explore new channels on TV. Explore new music.

7) Exercising: Find heart and lung stimulating activities you love doing and do those things often.

Childing: Hang out with children often; they don’t have to unlearn limited thinking they haven’t even learned it yet.

9) Doing: Don’t think about whether you can or can’t do something before doing it; do it and learn as you go.

10) Quick-failing: Fail quick and often, learn from it, and be better next time.

And with that, I raise a fork of yummy eats to you as you get to thinking about less thinking.