It’s no secret my “tolerance” for nitwit behavior has bottomed out. Mr. Wild Dingo may have taken note of my lack of tolerance, for well, stupidly behaving individuals once, twice or thrice in the past month.

But I ask you. What harm is it in practicing the zero tolerance for nitwits diet on a local level when we all have to endure the nitwit who did this:

If more people practiced “Zero Tolerance for Nitwits” on a larger level, maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Alice is my hero. I think we look alike.

Wild Dingo’s diet “Zero Tolerance for Nitwits” may be just the diet for you. Inspired by the founder of Wild Dingo, Maggie, who simply never accepted disrespectful, impolite behavior, this simple, two-step diet costs nothing and doesn’t even involve cutting out any of your favorite foods!

Here are the steps:

1. Make a list of ridiculousness that you refuse to entertain.
2. Cut loose any person or thing that falls within that list.

“Cut loose” can be applied permanently or temporarily. For example, “I have to get off the phone now, the dingo just ate a baby,” is a great example of temporarily cutting loose a ridiculous person on the other end of the phone. It’s perfect for telemarketers or nagging in-laws. Of course it helps if you have a dingo. “Burning pot roast” works just as well as “baby-eating dingo.” You get the idea.

Try it! Don’t be surprised if you find yourself instantly 10 pounds lighter and find the world a brighter place.

And don’t be afraid to use that “delete” key for those pestering your inbox. Don’t reply to a ludicrous request. Just hit “delete.” You may even lose an extra pound since you had to burn some calories hitting the key.

Here are a few on the short list of Wild Dingo’s ridiculousness:

1. People who don’t have the grace to recognize generosity. Can’t figure out how to say “thank you?” Read this book  and get back to me.
2. Adults with the social etiquette of a nitwit. See above.
3. Business owners who ask my advice on how to build a web site for free. Hint: Go to the grocery store. Ask the manager how you can get that carton of milk for free.
4. Business owners who ask me to build complex web sites for cheap. You don’t have the time to build your 10,000 product e-commerce web site and only have $200? Well then, I’ll be happy to schedule that for you. Do you have some time between never and a cold day in hell?

Whenever I find myself confronted with poor manners or ridiculousness (it seems I’m a magnet for the ridiculous), I just ask myself, “what would the dingo do?” And darn, if the answer isn’t as clear as a bell. That dingo still haunts me with daily affirmations to keep me blissful.

If you ever find yourself on the other end of my Zero Tolerance for Nitwits diet, don’t blame me. Blame the dingo. I learned everything from her.

A “stressor” is anything that provokes stress, an event or context that elevates the adrenal stress response and disrupts homeostasis in the body. Typically stressors fall into categories such as environmental stressors (traffic sounds, crowds, pollution), daily events (hectic work days, late for appointments, big projects due, chauffeuring children to events, rush hour traffic), life changing events (death, divorce, marriage, disease, disability). All of these are known to cause physiological and psychological changes in the body.

A “Zeitgeist Stressor” goes one step further, or wider, to include cultural, sociological or even political events or things that affect groups of people, communitites, as well as simultaneously the individual adrenal stress response. Things that fall into the category are (but not limited to) war, random violence (such as teen shootings), economical changes and technology.

As individuals, we think we’re unaffected by our own zeitgeist, but in fact, we’re merely adapting. How we’re adapting is the more relevant question. Do we really ignore the story on the news about the shooting at a local shopping center or does it actually affect our minds and bodies deeper than we’re aware? Does it feel great to be constantly connected to our technology devices or have they become a burden?

Opinions that deviate from the ruling zeitgeist always aggravate the crowd.”
- Germaine de Staël

Last year, Wild Dingo took a 6-month hiatus to address an unexpected life stress that needed my undivided attention. I turned down projects and did only the minimal to maintain current clients’ web sites. I even, to my embarrassment, had to terminate a big project that I had started. So needless to say, Wild Dingo’s household contribution was meager.

After coming home from a very much needed vacation in Hawaii, we were complaining about our clean but wrinkled clothes and wishing we could send them to the dry cleaner just to press them and not clean them.  I used the opportunity to bestow my new-found pearls from Whitney, and pointed my index finger at Mr. Wild Dingo and claimed, “Let’s get something straight. I make too much money to iron. Ironing is whack.” The irony nearly killed him.

Last month, a friend badly needed some cheering up. So I booked a weekday spa appointment for both of us at Burke Williams in San Jose. Oh that spa gives me goose bumps to think about it. We spent 4 hours there hanging around being pampered, then had a lovely lunch and window-shopped in places where we all we could afford was a designer shoe string. After a while, we looked at our watches and discovered it was 4:30. We had spent the entire day doing nothing but indulging ourselves.

When I came home from the spa, I felt enlightened by the discovery of how healthy it was to goof off on work day. I once again bestowed my Wisdom de Whitney on Mr. Wild Dingo: “Let’s get something straight. I make too much money to work. Work is whack!” Mr. Wild Dingo was not amused.

Still, you can’t help being thankful for pearls like Whitney’s that you can leverage for just about anything you need in life.  So once in a while, declare a “Work is Whack” day and rock it Bueller-style with a friend. Because life is short. And work is whack.