The Clean and Green Club

But I responded as a marketer. I want people to experience more delicious meals made with local organic ingredients, and by the way, without meat. I’ve been vegetarian for 43 years and see vegetarianism—particularly when based in local, organic foods—as one of the easiest ways to slash your carbon footprint. I don’t preach about it, but I remind myself constantly of Buckminster Fuller’s quote, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

This was my comment on his Facebook post:

Here’s why I do it. A lot of my work as a marketer is to foster ideas that make the world better—like the idea that eating locally grown organic foods can be appetizing. I carry these ideas beyond my paid work and see a well-photographed plate with a tasty-sounding description as a part of my activism that uses my marketing skills. I’m selling the sizzle, so to speak. And interestingly enough, many of my food posts get high engagement. It’s not uncommon to get 20 or 30 likes and several comments from people far away wishing they could come share my food. It’s also a vicarious pleasure for many people, just like sharing travel pictures. And finally, since the caricature of social media is the boring “what I had for breakfast” tweet, I want to prove that it’s possible to talk about what you’re eating in an attractive, even seductive manner. But I find Facebook a much better platform that Twitter. Need more room than 140.

Why did I post this, really? Because I am always looking for ways to put my ideas in front of new audiences. On some level, I’m a marketer every waking moment. And I hope you are too.

Marketing can be fun. And we can all learn from each other.

Here are a few examples of my foodie Facebook posts. Let me “focus group” you: do you find these capture your interest? Do they make you want to explore new foods? Am I succeeding as a spokesperson for this idea? Please share on the Comments page and we can all learn from this.

I’ll start with one that contained eight pictures (including the three just below). Obviously, some of the text refers to pics of the garden harvest that I’m not including here.

Who could believe that all these frost-sensitive veggies (1st pic) were still in my garden on October 24? Even a tiny (but absolutely delicious) zucchini. It’s supposed to go down to 34°F tonight, so I harvested everything fragile. In the harvest pic, you can see some of the beans have speckled pods. Those pods were too tough to eat, but the beans inside were great (2nd pic). 3rd pic is probably the last near-100% from-our-garden dish of the year (except I cheated with a bit of organic local shallot grown three miles up the road). Beans in pods, beans removed from the tough pods, tomatoes harvested green last week and now finally ripe, and that itsy-bitsy green non-polka-dot zucchini (I’m dating myself, I know—who gets the reference?) Served it with (local organic) sweet potato and organic (nonlocal) lentil tacos and a green salad, shown here when it was all still from Next Barn or our garden. Later, I added olives and hazelnuts. And while I was waiting for Dina to come home, I sliced up and began drying our remaining supply of home-grown jalapeños, most of which actually got to ripen and turn red on the vine. The ones I picked today were green. #locavore

Another great #locavore dinner: frozen corn and zucchini with dried tomatoes, local cheddar cheese, and salsa; sweet potato, tot soi, shallots, garlic, and ginger in peanut sauce; spinach-arugula-carrot salad with goat gouda, local brie, sunflower seeds, local home-roasted squash seeds flavored with cayenne and salt, and local apple. All the veggies and fruits other than what was in the salsa were local and organic. The zucchini, tomatoes, butternut squash were from our own garden. Two of the three cheeses were local. The peanut butter was locally ground but not locally grown. I don’t think anyone does peanuts around here. But there is a farm that does local organic ginger, and we buy it exclusively.

The Web Bender, Jack Humphrey, and JV Queen Gina Gaudio-Graves
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Practical Bliss: The Busy Person’s Guide to Happiness by Lisa Broesch-Weeks (InBliss, 2016)

Several times a year, an interviewer asks me, “what was the best decision you ever made?” I always answer, “the decision in my 20s to have a happy life.” That decision influenced everything else from that day forward. I believe it has been the key to my productivity, and the change I’ve made in the world.

Yes, it was a conscious decision. And yes, you can choose that path as well.

My client Lisa Broesch-Weeks can help you get there. She sent me a copy of her book, and as soon as I saw the title, I knew I’d like it. As a busy person, I love the idea of happiness for busy people, and I love the idea that bliss can be practical. She uses “bliss” and “happiness” pretty much interchangeably, seeing bliss as simply a more complete version of happiness (p. 96). I see more of a difference: bliss is more of a temporary high, while happiness, to me, is an ongoing state—but for this review, I’ll accept her near-merging of the terms.

Happy people. Lisa says, have figured out how to advance their purpose—which will be a verb, not a noun (pp. 44-48) and will be widely different for different people—with every part of their lives. And their purpose is not tied to serving one particular individual (p. 58).

They don’t beat themselves up striving for perfection; they’ve replaced stress-inducing words like “search” with power words like “explore” and “uncover” (p. 57). At work, they’re more productive and more engaged. Gallup put the cost of “employee disengagement” at $300 billion per year (p. 18), so there are dollar figures on that engagement. And at home, they enjoy better relationships, better health, and better brain function (pp. 21-24).

A lot of keeping happy is basic self-care: not letting yourself get overstressed…learning to say no to tasks that don’t advance your purpose or to people who deplete your energy…taking time for vacations, exercise, and other self-care (pp. 27-28) …and making space for your passions and pleasures. She reminds us that machines don’t run without time for recharging and maintenance, and neither do people (p. 26).

More stuff doesn’t create more bliss. And neither does running on the “hedonic hamster wheel” (p. 78—what an amazing metaphor!). And certainly you don’t get there by neglecting your passions in favor of something that feels “more important” but usually isn’t (p. 96). She points out that no one else is going to relieve you of your “optional obligations and stressors” and offers strategies to get rid of them in ways that don’t alienate others (p. 104).

Not all stress is avoidable, of course, and she provides help with managing the mandatory stress. As an example, she suggests worrying less about the need to appear constantly busy and more about how to add value (p. 111)—and shows some ways to shift focus from what’s wrong to what’s right, phrasing our goals and accomplishments in ways that the brain can hear and absorb, and act upon (pp. 119-126). Once concept I especially loved was the idea of gratitude for the wonderful future you expect, and not just for a present that may or may not seem fulfilling. She notes that this transformation helped her “put myself in situations where I would make it easier for success to find me” (p. 134). Time in gratitude, she says, is not an expense but an investment.

As the book wraps up, she advises on how to thrive despite happiness “haters” and how to forgive them (pp. 154-156). Though some of her advice may seem obvious, it can be hard to see from the outside, and always worth reminding ourselves: “I have what might be startling news. Living in bliss is a journey, much more than a destination…you may not know when you’ve arrived (p. 141, emphasis in original).

Note: Although I have done some consulting for Lisa, this review is not part of that arrangement and I am not being compensated for it.

About Shel & This Newsletter

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