Me, Myself and I

Im usually the last to hear of the latest best-selling self-help or inspirational book, mostly because my attention span for instructions is a mere blip. It is why the espresso maker in my kitchen is gathering dust, next to its unread manual. It is why I can’t follow a recipe, even if I regularly pick up back issues of Real Simple food specials at Books for Less, so anything I whip up in the kitchen is, technically, an original. With cilantro. Always.

So when I saw my friend Tony, a basketball-playing, hip-hop-loving radio jock and Jackass fan, with a copy of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret tucked under his arm while waiting his turn at the bank, I knew I needed to take a closer look at the self-improvement shelves. I’d seen him before toting what some might brand more “manly” reading — Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, or any volume of Calvin and Hobbes with all the existential pages folded in. But the dog-eared, Oprah-recommended, multi-platform marketed bestseller was something new.

I wasn’t at all ready for what happened after I had tapped him on the shoulder, ready to poke fun at his unlikely book, right there in line for Teller No. 1. “The best — ever!” he exclaimed, eyes flashing, with the zeal of a bus evangelist on uppers. Combined with other life-changing seminars he now seemed to be a fan of, the book had resonated with him in a deeply personal way, inspiring him to do a list of things that sounded like the entire back-blurb of the ultimate fix-it-all volume — take charge of his joy, constantly look toward the positive, mend relationships, cultivate inner peace, call forth good karma, and generally be good to himself.

After I had helped my dropped jaw back in place, and finished my bank transaction in a daze, I hurried straight to the bookstore. Oprah has built an empire by, to a large extent, trumpeting the virtues of being good to oneself, and, judging from shelves of self-help and inspirational books, so have a lot of other motivational speakers, authors and publishers. Surely an entire genre, despite some very unfortunate covers, could offer a number of forehead-slapping epiphanies.

As the scent of new paper intermingled with cold air-conditioning, I remembered all my friends making bright-eyed testimonies to all the manuals that changed their lives — creative visualization! Mind-mapping! — followed by more friends with even more strategies, other than reading up, of being good to themselves. More than just an epiphany on publishing trends and reading habits, my bookstore moment also made me realize that I am a bit of an anomaly in a generation that has largely chosen to live in conscious health, body and mind. It is a softdrink-free, brown-rice-eating, supermarket-label-reading, organic-food-eating, yoga-practicing, art-film-watching, meditating, mutual-funds-investing, gym-card-carrying, passion-pursuing generation that makes no apologies for the me-first-for-a-better-world mentality. I decided it was time to get a clue.

I am what i eat?

Ever since I gave up red meat,” said Gari, a photographer with the peaceful aura of a monk, “I’ve felt lighter, less tired, more clear-headed.” When I decided to follow suit, I was amazed at how easy it was. For about a month, I zoomed straight to the seafood selections of restaurant menus and bought cans of tuna in water for those early-morning hunger pangs while desperately trying to beat an article deadline. The waiter at Persia Grill, my neighborhood emergency restaurant for when I can’t think of what to eat anymore, had all but stopped asking for my order — instead, he took to telling me “grilled bangus” with what I thought was the shadow of an amused smirk. I made daily walks to The Market for fresh greens and figured that the walk plus the salad dinner was making me healthier.

I was being good to myself, food-wise, and I felt good, light and clear-headed. That is, until market day at Salcedo Park when I made the mistake of walking past the Cebu lechon stall. The scent of super-salted rib meat with a hint of lemongrass opened a crack in my defenses, and when Sunday family lunch rolled around, with a lechon de leche from Cebu on the buffet table, my resolve simply dissolved. Especially when I saw the ice-cold Coke, which is all you need after a hefty serving of oily food. That was the end of being good to myself, food-wise.

I, Lightweight

Exercise is my nicotine fix,” said another friend, who spends mornings running alongside a scenic river in the clean, cosmopolitan city in which she lives. Many
friends swear by the wonders of exercise, something that has become a vague memory for me (in has been quite some time since I broke a sweat trying to look fierce in college taekwondo), and have found the discipline to live by some form of it. Others run, some contort themselves into strange positions, and all of them sparkle through their days fueled by happy hormones. So I thought I could do with some of those.

I trooped to the gym at 4 p.m. on a Sunday, just to make sure there was no one to see me stare bewilderedly at the machines. But then there was the problem of how to operate the treadmill — never mind the risk of flying off the whizzing contraption, I didn’t even know how to switch it on. Luckily, a neighbor popped by and advised that since I had not had any form of exercise in years other than carrying heavy grocery bags, I should have my blood pressure checked before attempting anything. I made a quick run to the 24-hour free clinic in Salcedo Park (a lovely discovery in a metropolis where some public toilets are accessible only for a fee), found my BP to be normal, and decided that the only way to get in shape was to get help.

I hired a trainer to guide me through weight training, and after the first session involving the lightest dumbbells, my whole body ached. The only way to overcome the pain, the trainer told me, is to keep at it. My thighs wobbled like noodles with every step I took the morning after as I hurried past KFC, struggling with chicken-skin-and-salt deprivation, and I realized that to be good to yourself is a matter of being a little cruel to be kind. And that the first step to putting me first without apologies is to start, ironically, with an apology to myself — sorry, girl, this is going to hurt a bit. Especially when the reps for crunches double next week.

Pullout quote:

More than just an epiphany on publishing trends and reading habits, my bookstore moment also made me realize that I am a bit of an anomaly in a generation that has largely chosen to live in conscious health, body and mind. It is a softdrink-free, brown-rice-eating, supermarket-label-reading, organic-food-eating, yoga-practicing, art-film-watching, meditating, mutual-funds-investing, gym-card-carrying, passion-pursuing generation that makes no apologies for the me-first-for-a-better-world mentality. I decided it was time to get a clue.