How To Reward Yourself

When you received a bonus in your salary, was it celebrated with a nice expensive meal in the restaurant? Food? When you were young, and you received top scores in your exam, was it rewarded with food? How about the recent New Year's Day, and Valentine's Day? Food? Did you reward yourself or your family with food?

The next time you want to do so, think again and reward yourself with a massage, a health book, or an AirAsia flight!

It is not uncommon in most Asian cultures, even Mexican cultures to do so because of the rapid change in status and disposable income. In the olden days, food was fuel. So if you have more food, or some special food, it's considered an honour, a prestige. Eating rice or tapioca 364 days a year, then a nice little chunk of meat, or fish, would have been a super celebration.

I read about this Mexican short story:
"Everything in my family and in our Hispanic culture revolves around food. Celebrations, accomplishments, awards, sad occasions, even death is surrounded by food! When we were kids, if we did well in our report cards - food! If we received an award in school - food! When Aunt Fela died - food! And in Christmas time, means tamales - pork filling wrapped in thin corn dough, menudo (soup made from dried corn), bunuelos (fried flour tortillas covered with sweet sugar and cinnamon mixture) and hot chocolate made from real chocolate with cinnamon sticks."

In summary - it was food and lots of sugar and carbohydrates.

Well it was fine in the olden days, like a hundred years ago. When people are working in the fields. Burning carbs at a prolonged and continuous rate. Nowadays, we are indoors most of the time, and sweating from the hot sun and not from hot work.

So the next time you reward yourself - be creative and attentive, and conscious. Mindful of what is actually a best reward for you. The trojan horse of a huge meal will be more harmful than beneficial.

Some more reward examples that are within a price range of a nice restaurant meal:
Buy a book or two - that nice photo book, or that Lonely Planet travel book to your destination of your dreams Peru
Buy a yoga mat or Pilates mat, or that Pilates Swiss Ball - usually comes with some DVD video to get you started
Buy a map book of your country or a country you wish to visit - do you know most of the streets around you city, and do you often got lost? How about finding a new shortcut or park route? If you have visitors coming, they will be happy to have a map to refer to
Donate to Kiva which isn't really a donation but a soft loan you can offer to others and help them start their business (see here for more details and explaination - http://denzukefinance.blogspot.com/2011/02/kiva-field-update-message-from-kiva.html )
Make your own healthy restaurant meal - look up some special recipe online and then go out to have a nice grocery trip. It could be some exotic recipe from ChaoZhou
Experiment with no electric, no transport and no water for a day - you'll get the reward at the end of the day