All too often, the idea of  “walking away” is treated as the worst thing ever. Giving up on something is made out to be a a tragedy, a weakness and a character flaw… when sometimes it’s the very best thing you can do for yourself.

Giving up is often treated as a negative – the phrase itself has connotations of failure and weakness – when in reality, a willingness to walk away from something is actually an expression of strength and control.

When we find ourselves in a negative situation, the ability to change it by leaving is the ultimate expression of power.

Many of the situations in which we find ourselves only control us because we give our consent…  and then we seem to forget that we have the power to leave that situation.

Many people have felt trapped; because they view the idea of “leaving” as an admission of failure. To walk away is to “give up”, to reveal that you are somehow a lesser person for being unable to endure your situation with stoic resolve… or worse,... being unable to make it better.

Giving up and moving on gets framed as a tacit admission of guilt; it’s your fault that things went so badly and now you’re trying to run away from the consequences of your decisions instead of facing them like a grown-up.

But what is there to be gained from “winning” an interaction?  Giving up and moving on isn’t an admission of defeat, it’s about NOT playing the game in the first place.

When you’re working to improve yourself there are times when you will come to the crossroads where you have to decide whether or not you are willing to choose to change who you are as a person.

It is hard learning how to give up and let go of dreams and goals –And yet, it can also be liberating. 

Viewing giving up on goals – even ones that are clearly not working – as an admission of failure leads to devoting time and mental energy on things that cause us pain and get us nowhere. 

We believe that giving up – letting go of dreams and long-held goals – is something to be mourned and avoided. But often it’s a matter of understanding the truth.

Keep in mind: being ...

                            
The world is full of dieting information.  Some is valid, and some….is not so valid, and even the seemingly valid information is often more applicable to certain types of bodies and personalities than to others. 

It is easy to outsource our food decisions and dieting beliefs, because there is no shortage of fitness experts, diet gurus…including medical doctors, and lifestyle designers, who are ready to turn us into Diet Converts, or true Believers. 

It’s intoxicating to stumble across some diet book or some website that appears to have all the answers: a single guide you can faithfully read and follow to achieve your wished-for-goal. It often feels comfortable to listen to someone else tell you how it is.

But it’s important to avoid falling into a pitfall that’s a common trap.  Because these diet gurus or medical experts mostly make sense, we can easily take their word as gospel …swallow each and every thing they say….and stop relying on our own instinct and experience.
In life we are deluged by other people’s opinions on how we should live; how we should think; how we should eat and not eat; exercise and not exercise; how we should look; how much we should weigh.  But when we stop examining our lifestyle choices critically by using our own personal and individual judgment,  it can become more and more difficult to think for ourselves. We need to be intentional about the choices we make, letting our own inner voice guide us in making decisions.  Life is all about finding out what works for each of us, individually; how to increase the things that make us happy, and decrease the things that don’t.

If I become interested and intrigued by someone’s argument for a particular diet, lifestyle, or technique, I like to try it out with a neutral mindset for a while, then I abandon any part of it that doesn’t work for me personally. In this way I can find out if it works for my purposes right now,  or whether it might be useful at some later time.  Some of it might get indexed as a potentially useful item in my own diet toolbox, …. or not.    
                          &nbs...