Ebony's Pearls

The Bilgemunkee
Originally uploaded by nodigio

The Cornucopia Diet is not a food-related diet. It’s a resource points diet. In order to maintain mental and physical health and well-being, each person needs to hold a certain level of resource points in their cornucopia. Any resource points that exceed that minimum level are sharing points – resources the person can choose to share with others. The cornucopia is filled by receiving resource points from others, giving them to oneself, and being gifted them from divine sources.

This diet is therefore a three-part diet: bounty points, sharing points, and martyr points.

When you receive something – a kind word, a compliment, a jump-start when you forgot to turn your lights off in the parking lot, a free drink, a pay raise - you add those points to your cornucopia. Your cornucopia needs to have a minimum number of bounty points in it at all times to keep you happy, mentally healthy, and benevolent towards others. Each person has a different level of bounty points they need to keep on hand and that level can shift with stress levels, physical health, and societal health.

When you give something – a thank you, a ride to a stranded friend, paying the shortage for someone in the check-out line, holding a door open the right way (ie, no part of you is blocking the doorway, thus making it hard, if not impossible, for the other person to fit through the door), volunteering, helping a co-worker complete a project, planning and executing a party for a friend – you take points out of your cornucopia. Sharing points are dual points –the recipient gets full bounty points and you get back half the points you give away because it feels good and makes you happy to share.

Martyr points are when you do something you resent doing, something you feel forced to do, something that hurts you or makes you unhappy, or actions that drain your cornucopia below your minimum level. Stubbing your toe is a martyr point, as are having to rescue a friend again at some cost of sleep, money, and convenience for you or cleaning out your child’s cat’s litter box when the child is supposed to do that. You lose double the sharing points and don’t get anything back. Those who receive martyr points only receive half the bounty point value, so your rescued friend or child would get half the sharing points, and you’d be out twice the sharing points.

In seriously stressed and urgent times, you can operate for a short time with an empty and even negative balance in your cornucopia and it may take time to refill it when the emergency is over. You may also find you need a higher level of bounty points to fill your cornucopia before you have enough extra to share.

There are an unlimited number of points available, since this is all imaginary. This is a tool to use to determine if you can take on that extra task or to see just how well off you really are.

Some people see only that they are losing sharing and martyr points and don’t notice all the bounty points they get eve after their cornucopia ruptures from all the bounty points they hoarded. Others see only their bounty points and don’t count the sharing and martyr points until they’ve been running an empty cornucopia for so long, it bursts. Both of these types of people will break their cornucopias – suffer a mental imbalance of some sort.

Then, it takes a really long time to not only collect enough bounty points – they also have to rebuild their broken cornucopia. It may shatter easily afterwards, or have holes in it where it leaks points, and they may find it hard to handle the points they receive and give. They shed points randomly and uncontrollably, unable to manage them.

If you’re the kind of person who needs a visual aid, or a tactile one, get an actual cornucopia and fill it with small tokens – pebbles or those little glass beads used for potted plants and crafts, or wood chips, or something small and simple. We are going to start your cornucopia at a comfortable level – remember, the points are imaginary so it doesn’t matter where we start. Then, add pebbles when you receive bounty points, and take away pebbles when you share points – either happily or grudgingly. Try to keep the cornucopia comfortably full. If pebbles start falling out, work harder to share. If the level gets too low, sometimes, sharing a few will bring in a flood of bounty points. And if everyone could see your cornucopia and knew what it meant, they’d be able to tell if you were a good candidate to approach for help or might kindly offer you much needed bounty points .

If you choose to follow the Cornucopia Diet, you do have to be honest in the tallying of your points. You have to tally all the points you receive and give, both ways. If you are not honest and don’t keep an accurate tally, the level in your cornucopia will not be accurate. It will probably be close enough. There’s no need to stress over the levels in it so long as you don’t short yourself on bounty points.

Why are bounty points so important?

Bounty points are a reflection of your mental health, which in turn affects your physical health and state of happiness. When you have enough bounty points, you are happy, emotionally stable, mentally well-balanced and flexible enough to deal with anything that might come your way. An excess of bounty points give you greater resources to deal with life’s minor annoyances, to help other people build up their bounty points, and to share your excess resources around. While some of your bounty points will come from things like a pretty flower, sunshine, a sparkly pebble, the sound of a waterfall, the texture of a favorite blanket; many of your bounty points will come from people and shared with people. You can earn bounty points from friends, family, coworkers, strangers, things that make you happy, pets, wild animals, things that make you laugh (the internet…), and other such things.

Why should you share your points?

If you hoard bounty points to the point your cornucopia bursts from them, you’ve damaged yourself. Too much is as bad as too little. When you share points, you make those about you happier, filling up their cornucopias. They can then use their extra points to share with others. This may or may not get directly back to you, but it doesn’t matter. You earn back half the bounty points you share, so for every 2 points you give someone else, you get one back. You can share your points with charities, friends, family, coworkers, strangers, pets, wild animals, plants, and other things that need help, even politicians.

Why is it important to track martyr points?

When you track martyr points, you get to see clearly exactly what makes you unhappy. You can then change things so you are less unhappy, perhaps an attitude adjustment. For example, if you whine and complain and resent rescuing your friend in the middle of your sleep, you lose martyr points, but if you don’t begrudge the rescue, you earn bounty points instead. Martyr points empty out your cornucopia fast. You want to avoid martyr points as much as you can. Sometimes, you have no choice in spending martyr points – you have a chronic ailment, you were in an accident that is taking far too long to resolve, you lost a loved one. If you know you will have to spend martyr points, you can prepare for it by finding things that will give you bounty points, and you can use the presence of martyr point usage to decline taxing requests. Others may cut you some slack for having to spend martyr points and offer your bounty points to help out. Also, if you set yourself up in martyr mode, so you are constantly spending martyr points without any discernible or valid reason for it, you may find yourself not getting the bounty points you need. By tracking your martyr points, you can see how you are doing emotionally and mentally.

How do I find out what points things have?

I’ve prepared a very short, sample list of things that give and take points. Feel free to add to this list or to adapt it to suit you. Remember, the points are imaginary anyway so it doesn’t matter, unless you have an actual cornucopia you’re filling up with pebbles or beads, in which case, I’d make sure the points were easily divisible by 2 just so you don’t have to break the pebbles in half. It is a very short list.

Remember, if you are receiving g these points as bounty points, you get all the points. If you are giving the act, they get all the points, and you get half. If you grudgingly do something, you lose twice the points listed, and they receive half the points listed.

Preparing homemade soup for a sick family member who lives with you – 4/2 – martyr: 8/2
Preparing homemade soup for a sick family member who doesn’t live with you – 8/4 – martyr: 16/4
Watching the kids while your spouse gets an hour of quiet alone time – 8/4 – martyr: 16/4
Grocery shopping together – 2/1 – martyr: 4/1
Clothes shopping together – 4/2 – martyr: 8/2
Helping a co-worker unjam the copier – 4/2 – martyr: 8/2
Volunteering one hour at the local Food Bank – 10/5 – martyr: 20/5
Voluntarily cleaning up a section of your local park – 10/5 – martyr: 20/5


Strictly Bounty Points
Seeing a beautiful sunset – 4
Wake up to a snow-covered world and you don’t have to go out in it unless you want to – 6
Sunshine after a week of rain – 10
Seeing the first spring robin – 4
Unexpectedly hearing your favorite song wafting from someone else’s radio/iPod – 2
Reading a LOLCat that really does make you laugh out loud - 6