Quit Beating Yourself to Death with That Measuring Stick

We balance are checkbooks and hormones. We weigh in and clock out. Track frequent flyer miles, interest rates, Paw Points and our libido levels.  We measure body fat, cup sizes, male girth, and global warming. Yet none of these things bring us joy. So stop beating a dead metric.

 

Whether your Facebook likes are as high as your credit score or your calorie intake is a low as your blood pressure, it matters not if your happiness level is beneath Forest Gump’s IQ.

Dew points, ovulation times, sales quotas, salaries, and Twitter followers are all arbitrary numbers if you can’t say, “I Love my Life,” and mean it.

Pick up any magazine and you’ll be asked how many times you think about sex a week, how many orgasm you have, how much you weigh, how much you drink, how much you make, how much you drive, travel, eat, birth, bang, buy online, or eat Jiffy. Women when have been programmed since home economics class to torture themselves by measuring every fragment of their life down to the last drop of sanity they have in their calcium-deficient bones.

Can we cut the drama and stop measuring productivity, pollen counts and sperm counts, and start measuring how often we laugh, smile, kiss, hug, or touch someone’s life in a big, big way? Can we see a graph on that every night on the news instead of the length of Kim Kardashian’s marrige or Oprah’s spot on Fortune’s list of power people?

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

Robert Kennedy agrees with me that we’re measuring the wrong damn things. This is what Kenney said about the Gross National Product being the wrong metric a few years ago (March 1968). Robert knew how to be Happy Dammit!

We seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Sometimes I catch myself laughing then have to track back to when the last time I felt that release, lightness and joy. That’s when I know I need to put down the measuring stick and turn on some shtick.

I used to work night and day to be top in sales, have the best backhand, and countless ribbons and trophies. Now I listen to my soul because it measures the things that need attention and sweeps aside the things better left to the competitive Suzies who talk loudly and carry big vials of Botox.

Hey, Suzie. Go to Kansas City Craigslist. I just posted an advertisement for my rulers, scales measuring tapes and ego. They’re obsolete in my new, rocking midlife.

Please share this with anyone who needs a reminder that they’re all that and a bag of chips!

 

 

 

Tags: attitude, confidence, losing weight, midlife, reinvention

Category: Health & Happiness