Small Efforts - Setting Goals - POSTED ON: May 14, 2011
Here are 4 Core Elements to consider when Setting Goals:
Make sure your goals stand up to the following tests:
Are they realistic, specific and measurable, and do you have a back-up plan for when things don't go as expected?
Realistic
The goals you set have to be real in the context of your life. They cannot be based on some ideal version of your real situation and more importantly don't base them on some change you are ‘going' to make that will give you more time. Set your first goals according to what your life looks like right now! Look for changes that you can insert into your current schedule. If you are too busy to cook--then don't plan to cook at home every day. Start by finding healthy calorie controlled prepared foods that don't take a lot of time to prepare.
Specific
Make each goal very specific. Make sure that both the steps to achieving it and that the results are readily observable so there is no guesswork or grey in your ability to know what to do. As an exanple: “Today I will weigh and measure the kind and amounts of food I eat and immediately enter every bit of it into my computer food journal.”
Measurable
In the example I just gave. it is easy to measure the extent to which you completed the goal.
Back-Up Plan
Once you have set out some realistic, specific and measurable goals you need to set up a second set that mirror these goals but are a little more forgiving. These are useful when the unexpected happens. So for example, sometimes the unexpected occurs. For these occasions, instead of doing nothing (which feels like failure and can trigger a bigger slide) simply carefully note the kind and amounts of food eaten, jot that estimated information down and then enter it in your computer food journal later.
While this is less than ideal it IS still part of "the plan" and thus will have you feeling psychologically that you succeeded whereas skipping altogether would feel like failure.
Loss - POSTED ON: May 13, 2011
At present I have a broken wrist which causes the temporary loss of activities that I enjoy.
My injury is healing, which makes my situation temporary, but all of us experience losses that are permanent.
Some of them are enormous losses, others are small. People move away or die; relationships and jobs change; children age, time passes and our own bodies begin wearing out; favorite stores close; even favorite TV shows are canceled.
When we recognize we have lost something that was valuable to us, and that it is gone forever, we feel sad.
When we can turn our thoughts to the future and leave the past behind, we have accepted the loss and can get on with our lives. Hope is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the antidote to despair.
A positive way of looking at the losses in our lives is that the loss helps us see more clearly the value of what we have lost.
When we suffer a loss, what remains after the loss is the essence of that which we have lost.
If we have lost a person through death, we have lost only the physical sense of that person. What we will always have within us is the essence of that person. Or if we have lost something that seems like a part of ourselves, such as a job or a relationship, or a place etc., what remains within us are all the experiences and memories that we gained through that work, that relationship, or that location itself.
Serenity - POSTED ON: May 12, 2011
Serenity means calmness and tranquality. The Serenity prayer says:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. “
Some things we can change, and some things we cannot change. How do we know the difference?
Recognizing the difference between what we can change and what we cannot change will make our lives more peaceful and more productive.
Wisdom is the recognition that our control is limited. The only thing that we have any power over is our own behavior and our own choices.
For Serenity we must Accept that we have no power or control over the behaviors or the choices of others.
Changing the things we can, means mustering our Courage to work toward the difficult task of changing ourselves, specifically…changing our own attitudes and our own behaviors.
Many of us spend time feeling anxious about things we cannot change: things like the economy, the weather, traffic on the freeway, or the actions of other people who are close to us.
This focus on things that are outside our personal control drains from us the energy that we need to make the most of our own personal opportunities.
The Wisdom I’ve found is: that Acceptance of this Truth brings me Serenity and also gives me Courage.
Belief In Oneself - POSTED ON: May 11, 2011
Believing in oneself is simple to understand, but is difficult to put into practice. It takes a positive mindset to achieve in life, and a belief that we can accomplish what we need to do. To establish confidence that we can achieve our goals. we sometimes need to ignore what others say. Other people might tell us that we can’t achieve a seemingly unreachable task or target. But if we have belief in ourselves and have decided to work on achieving a task, success can happen. Self-belief…even in times of great desperation… is what gives us the confidence to put forth the effort that is necessary to accomplish our goals. The old fable below illustrates the point. One day after a day of hard work a donkey was returning home from the field and suddenly he slipped and fell into a deep well. The donkey started crying and hearing his cry, the farmer came and tried to pull the donkey out of the well. However the donkey was too frightened to even try to climb out, because he thought he might fall again while being pulled out of the well. Finally, the exhausted farmer, decided to take his friends’ advice to leave the donkey in the well and to close up the well so there would be no more falling incidents. The donkey was sad when he heard them discussing the plan. He had served the farmer for years, and now they were going to kill him by closing the well. He lost all hope. The farmer and his friends started throwing sand into the well and when the sand started pouring on top of the donkey's body the donkey realized he was about to die. But the donkey then chose to use this hardship as an opportunity, and started jumping over the sand each time it was thrown into the well. As the sand piled up, the donkey rose to the top of the well where he was able to climb out. This made everyone very happy. The moral of this fable is that when the donkey believed in himself enough to make the effort, he used his last opportunity to solve his problem.
Courage To Continue - POSTED ON: May 10, 2011
During my endless search for the Positive, it recently occurred to me ...
One great thing about using a computer software food journal similar to DietPower is that even if one didn't want to count calories or control portions,
...someday in the future, you could still be able to look back at your personal data, and learn your accurate food amounts, nutritional values and/or your eating patterns.
I have been making daily food entries into my DietPower journal for the past 6 years, and I can access any day's food information from the past 6 years.
For Example, suppose I wanted to know exactly what and how much I ate every Christmas Day or every Birthday or every Vacation for the past 6 years, I can pull that data up and compare it.
I find this ability to access personal information to be very compelling.
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