The Whole Story!

As I said, I invented these sticks when a friend of mine was getting married and I desired to give him a gift that would help him stay married. It is my opinion that the biggest cause of distress in marriage is "EXPECTING". When you are dating someone, everything they do for you is a glorious delight bringing happiness and pleasure. After marriage it seems that the enjoyment of the unexpected deteriorates into a constant state of expectation. We end up EXPECTING our mate to do this and do that, if they do those things they get a passing grade, if not they fail. Failure only seems to bring higher levels of expectation and so on and so on.

Thus, I recognized that my goal was to help him eliminate his expectations. How does one go about that? Well, I wasn't sure. I knew that by periodically adjusting our own attitudes and emotions we could learn to be more tolerant of our fellows in this earth so I set about searching for some simple method to accomplish this. I needed some way to present various "attitudes and emotions" so that an individual would think about them and make a conscious decision to reject or accept them on a daily basis.

I kept toying with the idea of a Zen Garden type of thing where I could have some sand and stones with words painted on them (attitudes and emotions) which he could move the stones back and forth from an "accept" side to a "reject" side, depending on the word but I thought that would be too messy and likely to be thrown away after a short time.

Then I remembered the movie The Greatest Story Ever Told and a scene where Nefertiti was playing Fox and Hounds with the Pharaoh using those four sided sticks. That is it! I thought to myself, if I used four sided sticks, writing a word (attitude or emotion) on each of the four sides, then I could make a small box with two chambers, one for accept and one for reject.

The procedure for using these "sticks" would be; every morning one would simply pick up the five sticks and give them a roll, Then picking each one up individually, reading the "attitude or emotion" (fear, love, kindness etc) making a conscious decision to accept or reject that emotion then physically placing the stick in the appropriate side of the box.

Quite simple but, I thought, potentially quite powerful since it would be a, not so subtle, programming of one's attitude for the day. When I made a set up for my friend I thought I might market these sticks so I went ahead and made up five sets at the same time. About a week after the wedding I went to the store to buy something. I do not recall what it was but I saw a friend of mine and we began talking. Eventually I mentioned my "sticks" and when he expressed an interest in them I told him "I believe I have an extra set in the glove box, would you like to have them?" To which he replied yes. So I fetched them and gave them to him with a little lesson on how to use them. This was in November.

The next time I saw him was in February and I said "Hello, how are you doing". To which he replied "I am doing well, thank you. But if you had asked me that question the last time we met, If I were completely honest, I would have had to answer not well. I was looking at a divorce, loosing my children and spending Christmas alone. But I started using those sticks you gave me and I have my wife, my children and we had a wonderful Christmas and I just want to say thank you!"

I knew immediately that I had to do something about marketing these sticks. That was about six years ago. Well I am late but here I go!

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