Welcome, ven a gozar!

It took me along time to figure out how to enjoy my life. I used to think that I had to be busy every minute, and every day should be filled with non stop events morning to night. After all that is what all the life style books, and the circuit speakers would talk about, doing what is most important each day.

They were the four windows, pyramids, and there were numerous scales where you could rank your projects, line up you meetings, your day, your life, other peoples lives. I lived in California at the time in the Sierra Nevada mountains. There was only so much to do, and I had a lot of time to read when the money ran out and I was partially homebound.

I read another version about how to live life to its fullest and to get the most out of life explained in a new way. At least if you left off the main purpose of the books and distilled what was left - that is what I came up with.

Except I did not really understand what I was reading…. How could I have a very full day generally doing nothing at all? How was it possible to get up each morning and enjoy one boring day after the next? Some years later I started understanding. I started having little short glimpses of how life is supposed to be.

I think it started with an old worn out man. An old man, and not good for much by a younger man’s standards, and pretty much a waste of space by an average teenager’s view of the world. But he had something I had never seen before. This old man who could not walk twenty feet, enjoyed going outside every day, sliding around on his butt and taking care of his yard!

An old happy man sliding around the grass digging up dandelions and tending flowers, drinking a beer, and not really caring that he could barely walk, I was curious enough to spend some time with him - an hour a week maybe spread across summer afternoons.

He used to tell me about when he was a younger man and able to do more. He said he lived pretty much the same as everyone else. He told me he thought life was okay back then, but nothing to get overly excited about. He said he drank a few beers, smoked cigarettes, and went through the motions of raising a family.

Eventually the kids grew up and started their own lives, his wife eventually took ill and died. His only boy left in town did not spend much time with him, had his own family. He figured that was pretty much the way life went.

Then he told me he became ill himself. He was in the hospital for a while, I am not sure with what, but as he lay in his bed, he started thinking about his life and how special it was even though by everyday standards it was pretty simple and common. Work, eat, sometimes sex with the wife, and sleep. Do it again, play with the kids on Saturday, and go to church on Sunday.

Somewhere in thinking about his routine he said he realized just how special those days were. He told me of those days were special, and every day was special, even if it was spent in a hospital bed. As time went on, I found a few more people like him, men and women both. Usually older, but they all understood just how precious their life was, even if it seemed dull and average looking in. It was the only life they were going to get, and they looked at the world with new eyes each day.

I know some of what they learned rubbed off on me, because eventually I too started to find life more exciting. I could even enjoy going to work most days! My life is what I choose to make of it. Once I decided to enjoy mine, time became short and precious. Now even the simplest things are more enjoyable, although my time is much more precious than I ever thought possible.

Living with anger was quite an experience. I found out late in my teenage years that anger simmered away in me. I never suffered from the bully type of anger thankfully. That anger only surfaces when it is ‘safe’ to do so. My anger was deeper, and it was a surprise when I discovered it. There comes a time in our teenage years when introspection starts creeping in to our psyche. For me it was more obvious, I was tired of being angry all the time.

It was during this time that I discovered the amount of anger I had. Looking back from that time, I could point out various times when I was driven by anger, but I was not able to find a time in my life when I could say, my anger started at this point. In my life, my anger seemed to have started before my first thoughts. I remember being a small child knowing I was tricked into coming here. I remember not wanting to come, of being immensely happy and content where I was, and now I was angry that I was here. Not your typical child thought, but it was the earliest anger thought I could remember.

Everything we experience has a reason. So was my anger. It had to be there for a reason, and just like feeling alone (previous post), I wanted to find out everything about anger. At first I tried to keep it under control. I would become angry, but anger is not socially acceptable, so I would try to hide it. All keeping my anger hidden did was to ensure that for the next three or four days I would be angry. It was not fun being angry for three or four days in a row. You find yourself mad at everything and everyone. I denied being angry, not wanting to explain to anyone that I was seething with (usually misplaced) anger.

The next step was to let my anger out. I looked for positive ways of getting rid of my anger, usually through doing something physical. That helped with my anger, but it never made any change in me. It just tired me out, so I cared less about other things. I used other parts of life trying to expel my anger, but they did not have any lasting effect either.

The next outlet I found for my anger was expressing it. Letting people feel the full force of my anger. Seething, cutting remarks, constant arguing, bickering, and generally making sure other people felt my anger as deeply as I did. It worked! My anger was diffused much faster, and I was able to get on with life much quicker. I could go to sleep at night and wake up without insatiable anger burning through my mind.

Over the course of time I found myself alone more often than not. I knew no matter how much my friends cared about me, they would only allow themselves to be a whipping post for my anger so long. Once that point was reached, they wanted no more of me, and I understood completely, as ironic as that sounds. One day I woke up and realized that what I was doing with my life was just plain dumb, and was of no value to me. At that point all that was left was me and my anger. I had done all I could with anger, and although it was a useful tool, it had its limits, and obviously I had abused those limits many times.

I was left with two choices. Either use anger as a positive in my life, or stay angry and let the world know feel my anger too. As with any other serious problem that we refuse to address, it always comes down to two very hard choices. Either continue to knowingly do something that is very harmful to deadly, or let it go. I chose to let my anger go. As with all changes, it took time. My whole life had to be reshaped, and I had a lot of ground to cover before people were willing to trust me not to hurt them. But I got there, and so can you if you see yourself here.

For years, late at night, especially when I was feeling tired, that empty feeling would start to creep into my consciousness. It would hang out on the fringes, biding its time. For it knew that sooner or later, I would lose focus on whatever it was I was doing, and I would start to focus on that feeling.

Sometimes, I would go outside and look at the night sky. I was fortunate to usually live in very rural areas, and the night sky would be filled with millions of stars. At times they were so jammed together that it would be impossible to separate one from the other, especially if they were part of the Milky Way on a cold clear night.

After a few minutes of looking at the stars, it would have me. This feeling of utter aloneness and desperation, that no matter what happened, the feeling of being a single spec in all the universe would never change. It felt at those times that it was my lot in life to be alone. Completely, matter of fact, written in stone, it was my destiny to be alone. The cold from space would start to chill my thoughts. Living my life from day to day with nothing to look forward to, nothing to be happy about.

Today when I am alone, I never feel alone. I know without a sliver of doubt, that even through those years of feeling distant from every other living human being that it was only a feeling that I allowed to pervade my thinking. It fed and took on substance from my feeling of smallness. Because I was allowing myself to wallow in this false feeling of being alone, the universe did its part to enhance the experience better than any theme park could do.

So, what does someone do when they feel like I had felt all those years? How do you cope and how do you find happiness when it seems all the world is together and you are separate from it? The answer has two parts. In retrospect , it is all so simple, in reality, it is about the same as the Indiana Jones film where he steps off the cliff believing that there is an arch present that Indi can not see, but he has faith that it is indeed there.

What I did was wallow in my feelings of complete separation and of being completely alone. I felt it was important to know that feeling, to explore it to the bottom of its depths. To learn and know, and understand just how large feeling alone was and finding out how small and unimportant I could feel. I did that each time that feeling overtook me. I did it until I knew I had travelled every boundary and stopped at every corner. I knew the full measure of that feeling.

Then I let it go. Just like an old toy, or an old shirt, that I knew without a doubt I would never wear again, I let it go. I was done with it. I knew I was not alone, and everything that happened around me happened because I was a part of it. I started searching for the vapor of a feeling that had to be there somewhere letting me know that everything was perfect. Eventually, I found a single thread, and I clung to it and followed it until I found the source. Then I came to the realization that I was never alone for an instant, I was simply not paying attention to the knowing that was in me all along.

If you feel this feeling of being alone, explore it to its end, wallow in it and get your fill of it. Then let it go and search for the feeling of completeness that is there in you. When you first feel a glimmer of it, you will never wish to let it go, and that is as it should be. The world is perfect, and once we learn all there is about being alone, there is no more to learn, and it is time to find the source once again.

Self Respect and Self Esteem always seem to be something that someone else we know has a lot of, but when we take inventory of us, we seem to come up short. We seem to have little self respect for ourself, and unfortunately that means we have no self esteem either. There is nothing wrong with loving yourself. If you believe there is you need to look deep inside of yourself and find out why you believe this to be true, because outside influences wrongly put this idea in your mind.

There are so many influences on us growing up as children that having self respect and self esteem in one area of our lives seems to be something others have, but we can not find them in us. We think about us and we find we are too this, and too that. We think we are never perfect, or even okay. It is time to change this thinking and put some correct thinking in its place.

I think self respect and self esteem have everything to do with how much, or in many cases how little we love ourselves. Loving ourselves does not imply that we idolize ourselves and can not see past our reflection in the mirror we can’t put down. It does mean that we appreciate and focus on our strong points, whatever they me be, and we also accept our what we see as our weaknesses.

Weakness in our life mean we are human just like everyone else. Loving ourself should be a reflection where we think as much of us as we think of other people. Self love leads to self respect and self esteem, and also correctly loving others. This is because we are giving ourselves permission to see those things in us, that make us who we are. Self love means we allow ourselves to care about ourselves, and once we care about ourselves we care about others by default.

Once we give ourself permission to really look inside ourself and discover what makes us who we are and what makes us unique, we start to see things that we may have never noticed before. We notice that we have gifts that others do and do not have. We notice apply our gifts at times and in places where they are most useful. We may if we allow ourself to be open enough to our world to discover that others appreciate and value us for who we are and what we do. But we have to allow these things for them to happen.

I have no doubt each of know someone who we admire and look up to who has just as many or more faults than we do. The difference between them and each of us, is those people have a better video running in their heads of themselves, and they place themselves in situations that use their strengths more often than we do.

Take some quiet time and think of all the good you do and find more places to put those gifts to use. The difference between you and someone you admire is the person you admire finds places to use their gifts and you wait for the right time.

Also take a few minutes to think about how unique you are. While you are exploring yourself tell yourself you love you. It may feel silly at first, but keep at it daily. The most successful people you know tell themselves daily how much they love themselves at least once a day, and there is no reason why you should not tell yourself you love you too. Once loving yourself becomes a habit, self respect and self esteem will follow shortly.

I found as I was growing up the years between thirteen and my twenties to be very awkward times. I think a lot of teens find this time of their life to be very difficult. I first noticed the change because I enjoyed fighting as a kid. Around the age of thirteen the nature of fighting started to change. Fights were no longer about who was the strongest. Fights were changing to who could hurt the other person more.

The second thing I noticed was I no longer heard I was cute any more. And the things I used to do to get my way were not working so well any more. At nine I could go from door to door asking for something to do for money and people would overpay me for doing the simplest tasks. About the age of twelve or thirteen work started becoming scarce, and the payment for work accomplished started shrinking.

Then I noticed the other kids in school were changing. It was hard to figure out what was changing at first. It was like they were trying harder to be adult, even though none of us had any real idea what being adult really was.

Girls were a problem too during my teenage years. When I was younger than maybe ten, we would all play together and have fun as a group. Slowly us boy and those girls pulled apart from each other and started distancing ourselves apart from one another. About the same time I started noticing there was a distinct difference between myself and girls. Something beyond the obvious physical differences, something that attracted me, and made me feel awkward at the same time.

Thinking of awkward, it was also a time when my body was growing faster and doing things it had never done before. One week I was out playing and having fun, and the next week my bones would hurt and my pants were shrinking. My school never did a good job of explaining this growth spurt to us, not were they very good at explaining I would start to have a sex drive that I would not understand, even though it took center stage in much of my thinking and cause more than a little personal embarrassment in the life of a thirteen year old.

The differences in the way I was being treated by the adults in my world, had a large effect on how and what I thought from moment to moment. I was slowly being introduced to life into the adult world, and I did not know what the rules were. Much of what i took for granted all my life in the way adults in my world responded to me changed. Of course at this age I was internalizing everything, deciding it was somehow my fault.

I think at this point when I started internalizing everything is where many teens get stuck in their lives. This is the time in their life when they start thinking they are nobody, everyone hates them, or they are worthless. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth. What is changing in the life of a teen at this time in their life is everything is changing and no one has bothered to tell you about it. Life rules are changing for you and no one told you.

No matter how awkward, unloved, or useless you may feel, you need to know that these thoughts are what you think people think about you. In fact everyone in your life loves and cherishes you as much as they ever have, but they are getting you ready for the adult world. Your friends if they were not going through the same things themselves would not be changing. In a few years, just as you learned how to walk and talk, you will have the tools you need to live and thrive in the adult world. Be patient, and remember almost everyone feels just like you do even if they act like everything is great, it probably is not…just like you.

One of the biggest and most difficult hurdles in life is learning who you are and what you are about. Most people dabble with this process a little in their teens, then the drive to have a family take precedence. As the family grows we have internal rumblings of dissatisfaction and being lost in our thoughts from time to time. Usually with an urge to get away from it all, and rediscover who we are, then reality appears, and it rarely happens. When formerly married people find themselves single again, they go through a modified version of finding themselves, but usually complete only part of the process. They discover how and why they are ok, but their ex partner is not. They generally halt the process at this point for the most part.

For most of us, it is not until our kids leave home, or we are cruising through our forties when we realize we really do not know a lot about us. We know what our beliefs are, and what our likes and dislikes are, but most of us we have no real idea why they are who we are. We only really know that we have been this way all our lives. It is during this period when we really start to find out about ourselves. Some of us like what we find and some do not, but it is generally a time of both inner and outer exploration.

A lucky or perhaps not so lucky minority of people go through this stage early in life. Perhaps in their teens or early twenties. It is much harder to explore yourself when you are younger because a number of life’s tools that come from living are not present. To compound the difficulty many common ideas in the adult world are still new to us, and we think we invented or discovered them for the first time. For anyone who finds themselves in this position, it is best to remember that what you are learning is new for you, but perhaps not new to others.

One area we exploration is finding how we think about the world and our place in it. When we are growing how the world effects us, and our immediate family. People who hold a world view that encompasses the world first, and not themselves are a rare prize. Generally, great struggles have gone on within their core being before they found this new plateau of seeing the world and their place in it.

This is only a minor example of how we change as our life unravels. There is a good learning here that applies to all areas of our lives. If you have ever heard or read the story of the blind men and the elephant you may already know how and why our views change. In the story, some blind men all examine different parts of an elephant and have different ideas of what an elephant looks like.

Whether you are one of the few who have more advanced ideas on the world and your place in it, or are just starting out on the journey and have no idea of how you fit into the world remember everything is perfect in this moment and time, all is as it should be. All roads lead to Rome as the ancient saying proclaims. What is important to remember is that unless you and the person you are discussing life with are touching the same spot on the elephant, your views will be different, and that is okay. Of course each of you will grow at different rates and your views will cease to be the similar, and that is how it should be too.

Conflict in these situations starts when one party forgets that neither party holds the correct view. The correct view is still somewhere ahead on the path of life. As soon as one party involved remembers either holding that view in the past, or that the other person is speaking from a experience level they have not arrived at conflict goes away. We can not pull or force another into our level of life. We can only hope that we are on the right path ourselves, and eventually others will join us.

There was a time when the people I surrounded myself with were a very mixed bunch. On one hand I enjoyed hanging around with smart people who had a vision for their lives. On the other side I hung around with people who were going nowhere and happy about it. This was before I was even out of high school.

Once out of school not much changed except my friends who had vision for their lives moved on in their lives to accomplish whatever goals they had set for themselves. For my part, my friends group were changing as the more focused people were leaving and more complacent people took their place.

It was a hard balancing act for me, I had ambition and drive, but the people I hung around with did not. I would spend my work time trying to do a good job, but in my personal life nothing was changing, or so it seemed. Looking back I can see I was sliding backwards in my life, helped by the people I chose to have around me. They had no real goals for their life, and like it or not, we become and are judged in part by our friends.

I slowly changed my friends and made a serious attempt to change my life around. It was not an easy task though. What made it hard was I was acclimated to a certain group of people and a certain life style. The groups I wished to be a part of saw me as course and perhaps a little shady. It took a lot lot of time and work to change. Change is never and easy thing to do, and it is made harder when you are changing your whole life in the process.

I feel that at some point along the way I completed the change. I look back on the young me and I think I would not recognize him if I could somehow go back in time and watch myself. That is not to say my personality has changed, but the way I envision life these days definitely has.

The point of all this post is: who you are, what you want, and who you choose to have around you. If you have goals and ambition that you have not yet realized, you may want to take a close look at those people you choose to be with. On a day to day basis, do they help you, hinder you, or neither? Many of my early friends were in a neither category, which was a hindrance in itself. It is hard to have friends who are leading a life style you are not a part of directly, because you are involved in their life by default.

If you find yourself in a position like I was, it is time to start evaluating what your friends are doing for your life. If your friends are not a positive influence in your life, and you want to change and grow, there is no alternative other than to see less of your current friends, and start making new friends. While this idea may sound selfish and self centered, and it is, at some point and time if you do not change yourself, you become who your friends are.

It is important to remember you are not leaving your friends behind, rather you are choosing to grow away from them to improve your life. Most of them will see you as moving on, although a few may not and there is little you can do about how they feel.

You will notice they will find a replacement to fill the spot you left, and you will find new friends too. Do not expect new friendships to fill the holes you have created overnight. There is little you can do to speed up the process, it will happen on its own time. The best you can do is remember you are trying to improve yourself. If your friends are paying attention they may even want to follow you and improve their life too.

New age, paranormal, or occult as it is known comes and goes, cycling through our lives, much like our taste in books, movies, and food. Everything has its season and the paranormal is no exception. Every generation has some people who want to be known as discovering some new or long lost knowledge. Bad news, there is no new knowledge when it comes to certain subjects, only knowledge that has not been passed on for any number of reasons.

It certainly is funny to listen to people talk about any experiences they may have had with something they do not know how to explain. If they are not scared someone in the group they are talking to probably is. I have trouble with the fear part as it is self generated fear and really has no basis in a rational thought process. If someone who is a Christian calls upon God, or asks to have angels sent to complete a task, and it happened no one would blink an eye.

We seem to think that God just sits wherever God sits and waits for us to command something. We think for any number that this thought is completely rational and viable. We pray, implore, beg, or command, and God of course complies with our request. We have this thought so ingrained into our psyche, that in a prayer circle,  if a number of Angels showed up and told the group they were going to do what was asked, most of the group would be nonplussed. After all that is how religion works.

Take the same group of people and put them in a new environment and let them hear, say scratching on a door from a room they know no one is in and panic erupts with fear coming a close second. If someone experiences something that does not fit into their idea of life, it must be the work of some unknown evil entity. There is no room in most peoples thinking that allows for something to exist that is neither there to help nor hinder, but it must always be one or the other.

The more rational people of times passed understood that not everything in the world of the unseen was either good or evil from their personal perspective, but in our fast paced life where we file and catalogue everything we have lost most categories of anything past the first two. Those two categories being either good for us or bad for us. We have not left room for very much in between those two places.

Most people over the course of a lifetime experience something occult or paranormal. Whether it is a ghost, noises, vision, or visitation, very few people are immune from the paranormal. A few people will have many such experiences, and most of them come to understand and accept there is a lot in the world that they know very little about.

In most cases when you find yourself in a position of experiencing something you have never experienced before, the first thing to remember is not to panic or get scared. Once panic or fear rules, rational thought goes out the window. Once rational thought goes out the window, you are no longer in charge of yourself. Once you are no longer in charge of yourself, you have opened a door that you may prefer remain closed.

Try to remember to not to jump from an adult orientation to a child mindset. You need the adult part of yourself active and functioning. Keep calm, and observe whatever is happening. In scary movies people become frightened of the silliest things. It could be something as inane as a glass sliding, or a picture moving, or something floating. Really what is so scary about those things other than you have never experienced them before?

If you feel you can not control your emotions, then pray. It does not matter what you pray about as prayer has a calming effect on us. If praying is not part of your makeup, simply downplaying whatever is happening, and focusing on something else has the same effect.

One more thought to remember, probably the most important idea, one which you have been told since you were a child and have forgotten is this. Anything you experience can not harm you in any way unless you give it permission to (let it). A feeling of something unseen touching your shoulder is just a touch, no more, no less. There is no reason to lose control of yourself over the situation because there is nothing you can do about being touched, it is already in the past.

Now that I have your attention I want to mention in passing that the above ideas work just as well in our everyday lives too. Stay within yourself, and do not get rattled every time something changes in your world that you do not like and probably can not control. Nothing stays the same, and never has. Change what you can, and let the rest take care of itself.

When I read other people’s blogs, they seem to be filled with relationship problems. People feel bad about the state of their relationship and they share their problems with the world. Fortunately most of the blogger,s who are posting their feelings for the world are people who age wise are some way from becoming relationship experts.

The biggest problem that I read about seems to be that someone in the relationship is struggling to make a strong bond when the other party is not really interested. The second biggest problem is one person can not come to terms with the idea that the person they are in a relationship with has interests that are not identical to their own.

The third and no less serious relationship problem I read about is one person can not understand why someone they feel infatuated with does not reciprocate. They can not understand why they are being rejected in such an offhand fashion and why their feelings are being so trampled. This problem seems to be the least serious of the three because  the relationship really has not gone anywhere yet.

Of course there are many other problems that people put out daily for the world to ponder, but these three things seem to be the big hitters among young adult trying to find their life and are being hurt and confused in the process. It really should not be this tough to find a person in which someone can have a happy filling relationship with. There are billions of people in this world right now, and every one of us is likely compatible with a few million people around us.

The first task is to look inward and find those things we want in someone we want to spend our life with. No matter what else someone looks for in a relationship, certain traits should come before all others. For example everyone wants to be with someone fun. Issues start with the idea of ‘fun’ because before the relationship starts fun has never been really defined. It is vitally important to define what fun is in a future partner over the long term. Be aware that what is fun now, is not always fun ten years later when your lives have changed.

It is important to remember that just because you want to know someone better does not mean they want to know you better. When this happens, it should never be taken as something personal, even though it feels like it is. What really happens is you are offering a possibility and  you are no longer in control of the situation. If they decide that they too are interested in knowing you better that is wonderful. If they do not that is not a reflection on you, and you should not take it as such. Put it into perspective and think of it as offering someone something you think they may want. You make the offer and find out they do not want it. It has nothing to do with the value of your offer, only the offer, and that is very important to remember.

Once someone has accepted your offer of entering a relationship with you, it means they are testing possibilities, nothing more. Whatever it is that peaked your interest in this person should start to become less important as you learn more about them. This seems to be a big hurdle for people to get over. If they decide they will not be compatible with you, it is time to let the relationship go. Holding on and trying to force a relationship the other person has no interest in pursuing only leads to drama and pain that need not happen. Think of this period as test driving a car. If they feel it doesn’t feel right, be satisfied with that and let it go

Of course these ideas sound simple and obvious, and of course they are. When you find yourself frustrated early in a relationship, it is hard to step back and look at the situation in an objective rational manner. It is important for yourself and your emotional health to take some time every day and look at your new relationship and honestly assess its current state. It is much better for you and the other person to stop it early, that ending it in the future when there are more serious ramifications, with emotion being just one of them.

I started on a lifestyle change right before Christmas. I reached the point where I knew without a doubt that anything readily wrong with me was my fault, and if I did not change, I was not going to wake up healthier one morning. I thought about all the foods I eat that I knew I should not eat, and what they were doing to me. I had made the decision I was going to improve my eating habits, or I was going to die trying - hopefully a little literary extravagance in the expression. This time I was very serious, and I was going to make it work no matter what it took.

I started out well, at least I thought I was starting off well. I traded the man sized burgers, fries, and a coke for the woman sized portions, and the sugary soda for a diet soda. I added more vegetables to my meals. I ate a little less white foods, making up the difference in meats. Over the following two months I had lost about ten pounds. I lost that by eating little for dinner and waking up very hungry. Of course over the two months, I started making up for being hungry at night by eating more for breakfast.

It is really an interesting situation we Americans have ourselves in when it comes to eating. We generally eat more in some meals than we should be eating in a whole day. I won’t go on with what those meals are, other than to say they meet the taste requirements of the new American food groups are: grease, sugar, and flour. The more of these bad foods in combination the more we like them.

I used to work with a guy whose diet consisted of: Twinkies, canned vanilla pudding, and pop. That is all he ate every day. We all knew he was not going to live to long on a diet like that. We would talk about his poor diet while we ate burgers and fries. Later I worked with a woman who lived on toaster pastries and coffee. I was sure she was not going to make to another birthday. I thought these thoughts as I was giving up eating most pork, and all gravy - with a few exceptions of course.

Now it was my turn to really look at myself and help myself eat better. I thought maybe if I made sandwiches instead of burgers and had some corn chips, and diet coke my diet would be better. After a month of sandwiches, nothing had changed. Somehow my idea of eating better just was not working.

I did what I think I do best in these and similar situations. I decided I was suffering a case of wrong think. All I was really doing was substituting one poor food choice for another poor food choice. All the while thinking I was really changing my eating habits. All I was doing in reality was changing the composition of what I ate, while not changing what it was all made of. That was a hard pill to swallow, but it was better to admit I did not have a clue how to eat healthy, than to continue eating what I was eating. One meal out of the house I have always enjoyed was going to a salad bar. Watching other people at the salad bar, and their food choices started me down a whole new way of eating.

It is important to remember the idea that salad bar sounds healthy. Everyone there should be slim and trim, but they were not. Just like anywhere else, there was a mix of sizes. I grouped the people at the salad bars into two main groups. Those who were over weight, and those who were not. I started watching what the two groups ate for their meals. What I discovered really took me by surprise!

The more rotund people were eating about the same things I ate, a small plate of salad, followed by muffins, pastas, and ice cream with toppings. When I looked at the slim people they were eating salad, light soups, and one bread or muffin, and perhaps a small amount of ice cream for desert. What a difference in eating habits! I knew right then I needed to start eating like the slimmed down people were eating. I also knew I did not have a clue how to eat like they were throughout the day.

I found a book that promised to get me on the right track. The book suggested I would lose all the weight I wanted in the process, plus I would feel better each passing week. I had to ask myself, how many books make that promise? Well, when I went online to the bookstore, I found eighty-seven people gave this book an overall four point five stars on a five star scale. I thought conspiracy right away, what else could it be? There is no book that good. I read through some parts of it quickly and decided I liked what I read. It was straight forward, talked to me in a way I understood, and it made no frills attached sense. Except it was a vegetarian diet! A VEGETARIAN DIET! Who in the world ate like that? Obviously the authors and eighty-seven other people eat that way.

Thirty plus pounds later, I can attest to everything the book says is true, for me at least. Besides losing a lot of weight, I am still losing weight, and generally my health has improved more than I ever thought possible. I can’t say I am total vegetarian even though I ate tofu scrambled and spiced to look and almost taste like eggs today, along with a bowl of three bean chili and some bread that contains no grain, toast with almond butter, and an orange, all for breakfast! I still enjoy some chicken now and then, and I ate two pieces of beef, and two eggs, in the last month. Overall I can say I really enjoy the way I eat now, for no other reason than I am getting the results I want. I am also learning what it means to eat healthy, to eat right, and it feels so good!

I don’t have any intention of selling you on my new way of eating. Friends and family find it pretty bland, and can not believe I can eat the way I am learning to eat. For me it is the first of many baby steps as I learn how to eat right without following a manual of eating. What I am suggesting, is if you are willing to admit what you are doing in any area of your life is not working, there is hope and help waiting when you are ready to change. All you have to do is want to change bad enough that other things in your life become second to achieving your goal. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

That means you can do it too if you are willing to set aside what you think you know, and admit what you know does not work for you, whether it is eating, relationships, or life in general. Go to the book store, get on the net, or talk to people who seem to be doing it better than you do. When you want it bad enough, you will find a new way that works for you.