What kind of question is that? Did you know your grammar is way off? Is there a hidden meaning here? Yes. There is. I will get to it soon.
On a secret Facebook forum I have been on for some months now, no I am not telling what forum, I am on a couple of them anyhow, we have been talking about physical attributes, specifically plastic surgery. It turned into a very fascinating, not at all heated, discussion with both men and women joining in and giving their opinions.
It was wonderful having a man come out and say to us ladies not to put too much stock in our "ladies", yes those two specific ladies, that our loveliness comes from within. He is right. However, just to be interesting, I countered that in my opinion, a breast lift is no different than the years I have spent putting face lotion and anti-wrinkle cream on my face religiously for years which is now paying off. Hardly anyone believes I am a grandmother.
This was followed by a discussion about reconstruction surgery after cancer. Of course, all of these things are personal decisions that mean much more to the person considering such measures than to anyone else.
What does this have to do with apple pie? Nothing. It does, however, have to do with the P in PIES, which is what our forum was discussing. What the heck is PIES? PIES is what has kept me sane in an insane world. It has saved my sanity and possibly my life. It has kept me grounded and happy at the same time. It has made me grow beyond myself in ways I didn't think possible while at the same time it has brought me back to who I was originally meant to be.
A few months ago when I was doing very bad, just flat out way bad, I came across a website called PIES University (www.piesuniversity.com) aka It Starts With Attraction, founded by Kimberly Beam Holmes. She, and her father, Dr. Joe Beam, are also the founders of Marriage Helper (www.marriagehelper.com), an organization for couples whose marriages are in need of help. They discovered a pattern in broken marriages which led Kimberly Holmes to develop a program to hopefully help individuals not only deal with their marriage issues, but help them in all areas of their lives.
When I found it, a few months into the covid lockdown, I was desperate to get out of my pit of despair, a pit I unfortunately still find myself in periodically, but PIES always pulls me back out. I cannot brag about it enough. It does cost money to do the entire program. I found it well worth it. It saved me money on therapy. (Pssst...I traded in my therapist for a PIES utilizing life coach, which is another one of the secret forums I am on.)
Am I getting advertising money for talking about it? Not a dime. However, if they offered me some, I wouldn't turn it down.
PIES is an acronym that stands for Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, and Spiritual. (Body, mind, heart, and soul.) It's a way of measuring aspects of life that are typically not easy to measure to make yourself more attractive.
Attractive to whom? To other people? Yes, certainly. But first and more importantly, more attractive to yourself. How much do you like you? How much more could you grow within to like yourself more? How much more could you stretch your own boundaries to increase your happiness not by gaining more but by enjoying more of what you already have?
It works!!! It got me back into putting myself out there, less afraid, grateful, and with more joy in my heart. It got me writing again!
As I said, I still have bad days such as yesterday, but I now know the secret that isn't a secret to handling the bad days so their numbers remain low. They have made it easier for me to find the Humor In Chaos. The chaos isn't gone. My attitude about the chaos is stable and something to be grateful for.
How does it work? I can give a quick overview. It's less a program and more a concept where you develop your own program and change it as needed every 30 days.
I started with P. I looked at my physical status at the time. I decided what I wanted to change. I started from a large concept: I wanted to lose weight and increase my endurance. For those who know me personally, you know I have very serious health issues. I had gained significant weight due to chronic pain from lupus, fibromyalgia, and degenerative disk disease. My lupus was under good control finally, and I had recently gone through back surgery. My pain was down, but I was still in bad shape.
My initial goal was good (less weight, more endurance) but not measurable. I broke it down. I wanted to lose five more pounds (I had already lost twenty just from lupus improvement), and I wanted to be able to walk two miles in a decent amount of time. What is a decent amount of time? I didn't know. Still not measurable. I had to break it down further.
I settled on these measurable items: lose a total of 25 pounds from the start of 2020, I was already down 20 pounds so I had a head start, get down to a size 8 jeans, and be able to walk three miles within three hours including breaks. That was my goal for the month of November, 2020.
I tracked each month, measured my progress, and reset new goals at the end of each month.
I recently finished month six. I lost a total of 52 pounds, am a size 4 jeans, walk 5 miles almost every day without resting in well under two hours, and more has happened! That's just P!
Other important aspects of PIES include journaling, gratitudes, and I added for myself manifestations. Every night before I go to bed, I take out my PIES journal and write down what I did for my PIES that day, three things that day that I am grateful for, and a list of manifestations written in present tense that I want for my life. At the end of the 30 days tracking everything, I look back at the goals for the month, journal what goals I reached, and I set or reset goals for the next month. Journaling my goals helped me see the world in a new way. It helped me appreciate what I have.
I do suggest checking out PIES University, even if you don't want to pay for the course. I think some of the things on it are free. And, I believe they have a promotional program that starts on June 7th, 2021. A week of motivations or something like that.
At minimum, I highly suggest starting a gratitude journal. Gratitude is an underestimated commodity.
I will get more into the individual PIES in future blogs. In the meantime, I am rewriting chapters 9 and 10. Progress is slow, but is happening!
Thanks for reading!
Sarah
Humor In Chaos
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