But first, a word from our sponsor (me) ...
The Cherry Pie Paradox audiobook and workbook are coming out very soon! With these two additions to the “CPP suite” (paperback, ebook, audiobook, workbook) I will have completed a decades-old commitment I made to myself to share the transformative process I created back in 1975, called Thin Within. It is a sequential and experiential process of self-discovery, observing your relationship to food & your body, with affection, in order to heal it. And dammit! I was there with the anti-diet mindful eating approach waaaaay before “intuitive eating” became a thing.
Many readers who never had a “weight problem” nevertheless find the book helpful as a road map for becoming more aware and intentional in other “darker” aspects of their lives.
So, what “Dark Side” are we talking about? Remember Donald Rumsfeld's famous “known knowns,” the “known unknowns” and the “unknown unknowns” re the Iraq war? (What we know that we know, what we know that we don’t know, and all those things we don’t even know that we don’t know.) Those unknown unknowns are “in the dark” to us.
But there’s a more interesting piece of knowledge that is also in the dark for us—what I call the “unknown knowns.” These are aspects of our own self-knowledge that we have forgotten, ignored, or don’t choose to see. The Cherry Pie Paradox process creates a context for observing and questioning our own attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors.
It's all in the brain. Our brains are very busy keeping our body systems going and looking out for danger, so whenever it can delegate responsibility to our habitual ways of thinking and behaving, it will. Unfortunately, when on automatic we don’t stop and ask ourselves: “Huh! What am I doing? or what did I just do? And why did I do that? Why do I think that?” The exercises in the book and forthcoming workbook are designed to shed light on what’s been hiding in plain sight—which then gives you the opportunity to make fresh choices that are more in line with your intentions.
Our known unknowns are ubiquitous. Why do we stay friends with a certain person who makes us uncomfortable? Why did we agree to do a certain thing despite not wanting to? Why did we eat that stale cookie when we were already stuffed? Why do we say we’re going to do something to market our book (not naming names) and then get lost on Twitter instead? Something’s going on here… but we plow on without stopping to ask what our inner self is trying to tell us.
And why the Cherry Pie Paradox Workbook? I created it to help readers/listeners collect all their observations and experiments in one place. STAY TUNED for a special offer within the next couple of weeks! Good stuff!
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AUDIOBOOK EXCERPT from my own dark side... I had some nasty things to say about cottage cheese. Now you can listen to Melanie Carey's dramatic narration of My Cottage Cheese Rant from the audiobook.
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