Harper, Craig S.
2008
Even as a teenager I learned that, as a rule, the stuff which tasted great was bad for me, and the stuff which tasted like complete crap, was gonna do me the most good. What a ridiculous notion. What kinda weird-ass, nasty prank is that to play on a fat food-loving kid? So not fair. So not a lesson that I wanted to learn.
“Whaddaya mean, donuts don’t have the same nutritional value as vegetables? Let me see that research paper.”
As a somewhat resourceful (code for smart-ass) chubby thirteen year-old, I actually could have run workshops for the masses:
* Vegetable Evasion 101.
* 50 creative things to do with vegetables at the dinner table, other than eat them.
* How to create the ‘illusion’ of vegetable eating.
* Managing your fear of vegetables through cognitive disassociation.
* Developing your own vegetable allergy.
If the entire range of vegetables started and finished with potato, I would have been a vegetable-a-holic. I could, on occasion, stretch myself to carrots, but only to keep the Vegetable Police off my back momentarily. Peas were mushy crap, the asparagus smell was worse than my school bag (that’s saying something), brussel sprouts totally creeped me out, and I had re-occurring nightmares about broccoli; it reminded me of teeny, weeny trees. Didn’t look like food to me. Disgusting.
For the majority of my teenage years, my mother and I actually engaged in vegetable warfare.
Gotta say, in her thirties, she was quite the tactician. She needed to be; I could spot a hidden vegetable at thirty feet. Mothers do that you know; the vegetable ‘hiding’ thing. They’re trained in it by their mothers. And their mothers, mothers before them. We poor, simple men live in the dark when it comes to this stuff. I’ll write an article on that one day.
As I got older, she became more and more skilled and increasingly cunning. Not fair really, I was just a dumb kid. You grow up thinking that mothers are all ‘love and light’; they’re not. They are sneaky, resourceful, creative and extremely strategic adversaries. Sure, they look all cutesy and caring; it’s a complete scam. They are hard-core. They are simply vegetable pushers in frocks. Yep, many significant battles were fought at the Harper dinner table.
“I don’t care how long you sit there Mister, you’re not moving until you eat every last vegetable on that plate!”
“Cow” (in a feeble-under-my-breath whisper).
“What did you say to me?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll give you some ‘cow’ around the ears in a minute, Mister backchat”
That’s another thing nobody tells you – Mothers having super-human hearing; it’s like some in-built, special survival mechanism, chick thing. It puts us kids at a biological disadvantage. What kinda lame-ass ‘level’ playing field is that? I wish I learned about the hearing trick earlier. Coulda saved myself a lot of heartache. It’s amazing how scary a tiny little woman, with cooking utensils can be.
Did I mention their unique propensity to bend the truth?
“Mum, does this have broccoli in it…?”
“Hmm, don’t think so..”
LIAR!
Your pants are SO on fire Mary Harper.
When it came to vegetables, she had absolutely no morals. She would lie, cheat and coerce those horrible things into my mouth. She would look at me with that innocent, ‘but-I’m-your-mother-why-would-I-mislead-you’ face and then proceed to lie her ass off. Even when I’d find the offending vegetable in my meal (hidden cleverly under the good stuff), she’d come out with “I don’t remember putting that in there!!”
No wonder I have trust issues.
It wasn’t until I hit my twenties, that I actually began to understand and appreciate the psychology and the motivation behind my mother’s sneaky little habits. And yes, I did reluctantly discover that broccoli is amazingly good for me. Even though it doesn’t come close to cheesecake, I consume it on a regular basis because it’s good for me. Now, if only someone could only create a cheesecake with the nutritional values and benefits of broccoli! Or conversely, maybe grow some broccoli that tastes like cheesecake. Now there’s a business idea.
I now use the ‘Broccoli Principle’ when I am working with people in the areas of personal and professional development. Even as adults, we are addicted to the ‘yummy’ stuff (metaphorically speaking). The stuff that’s easy, the stuff that ‘tastes’ good, the stuff that doesn’t challenge us, get us out of our comfort zone or cause us to become stronger and more capable. It’s also usually the stuff that doesn’t allow us to grow and be ‘healthy’ (psychologically, emotionally, developmentally). We ‘eat’ what we want, rather than what we need. We’re adults behaving like spoiled brats. And what we end up with, is stunted emotional growth and personal development scurvy. In order to ‘grow’ properly, develop our potential and create our own version of ‘amazing’, we need to eat the broccoli that life serves up.
Okay, I’m off to investigate that cheesecake flavoured broccoli thing…
About the Author:
Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is the #1 ranked Motivational Speaker (according to Google). He is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host and owner of one of the largest personal training centres in the world.
International Speaker – Craig Harper
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – The Broccoli Principle
 |
Skulls The, Art Poster with Metal Frame, poster size: 11 x 17 … |
 |
Skulls The, Art Poster with Wood Frame, poster size: 11 x 17 … |
 |
Skulls The, Art Poster, size 11 x 17 … |
 |
Leatherheads (Widescreen) $1.99 Leatherheads is a sort of two-fisted homage, simultaneously celebrating the early, unstructured days of professional football and the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s. George Clooney stars as “Dodge” Connelly of the Duluth Bulldogs, a wily (if a bit long in the tooth) player whose team goes bankrupt. His solution is to lure a war hero and star of the college-football circuit, Carter “The Bu… |
 |
Leatherheads (Full Screen) $2.49 A ROMANTIC COMEDY SET IN THE WORLD OF 1920S FOOTBALL, WHERE THE OWNER OF A PROFESSIONAL TEAM DRAFTS A STRAIT-LACED COLLEGE SENSATION, ONLY TO WATCH HIS NEW COACH FALL FOR HIS FIANCEE…. |
 |
The History Channel Presents The Civil War $19.23 CLR/BW NR/6 DVD… |
 |
New York Times Cookbook 1961 Edition … |
 |
Promised Land: Penn’s Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of Delawares $24.95 The Walking Purchase of 1737 marked the end of negotiated boundaries in Pennsylvania, both geographical and cultural. Dispossessed by the fraudulent purchase and the conspiratorial diplomacy before and after it, Delawares chose variations on several responses, including migration, negotiation, conversion, and violent retribution. This book sensitively reconstructs their world from the time Europea… |
 |
Invasive group B streptococcal disease in the elderly, Minnesota, USA, 2003-2007.(DISPATCHES)(Report): An article from: Emerging Infectious Diseases $9.95 This digital document is an article from Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases on August 1, 2009. The length of the article is 2436 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.Citation DetailsTitle: I… |
![Life As a House [VHS]](http://www.theamazonguide.com/send.php?i=aHR0cDovL2VjeC5pbWFnZXMtYW1hem9uLmNvbS9pbWFnZXMvSS81MVoxQlhFS1hXTC5fU0wxNjBfLmpwZw%3D%3D)
![Life As a House [VHS]](http://www.theamazonguide.com/send.php?i=aHR0cDovL2VjeC5pbWFnZXMtYW1hem9uLmNvbS9pbWFnZXMvSS81MTZQTUNXR0Q0TC5fU0wxNjBfLmpwZw%3D%3D)
![Windrider [VHS]](http://www.theamazonguide.com/send.php?i=aHR0cDovL2VjeC5pbWFnZXMtYW1hem9uLmNvbS9pbWFnZXMvSS80MW9vbDh5Snc3TC5fU0wxNjBfLmpwZw%3D%3D)
![The Blob [VHS]](http://www.theamazonguide.com/send.php?i=aHR0cDovL2VjeC5pbWFnZXMtYW1hem9uLmNvbS9pbWFnZXMvSS81MVFSQ0I4Q0NUTC5fU0wxNjBfLmpwZw%3D%3D)
![Stuart Saves His Family [VHS]](http://www.theamazonguide.com/send.php?i=aHR0cDovL2VjeC5pbWFnZXMtYW1hem9uLmNvbS9pbWFnZXMvSS81MUJEWjZQQlhSTC5fU0wxNjBfLmpwZw%3D%3D)
Comment