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.

Today is Mother's Day.
46 years ago, on Mother's Day, I gave birth to my first child.
This changed my life forever.
Motherhood does that for us all.

Each of us goes through Life Events that change us,
and that process continues all throughout each of our lives.

So whatever your life is at this moment...
...there will be changes.

Our Attitude about those changes is what will determine
how positive or negative any change is.

We can't stop Change,
but we CAN learn to develop a positive attitude about it.

Developing a positive mindset is a powerful life strategy.

I’ve found various positive thinking techniques to be useful.
Over time, small inspirational messages to myself, have helped me
to change the way I see the world around me,
and have helped me to Focus on those things in life that I find important and valuable.

Our words and statements about the events in our lives have a great deal of power.
The positive builds us up, heals us, and brings us joy,
while the negative
does the opposite.

Life contains both the negative and the positive.
However very few things in life are totally positive or totally negative.
Each involve personal value judgments rather than essential Truths.

I’ve learned that my own personal happiness is determined
by how much Focus I place on the positives.

 My current injury is putting this philosophy to a daily test. 

However I have frequently experienced that I  have the ability
to make myself happy through my own thoughts and behaviors.

I have been using DietPower for the past 6 1/2 years,
and I have logged in all of my food every day
during that period...ie. 2409 days.
I intend to continue using it for the rest of my life.

  During my first 16 months of DietPower use,
I lost from 190 lbs down to my goal of 115.
I have been working to maintain at or near that weight
during the 5 plus years since then.

During that time I've used a great many different diets and food plans,
but always continuing logging all my food into DietPower every day
no matter what that food plan was.
Even all my VERY HIGH-CALORIE were always logged.
I consider myself a 100% success with DietPower.
This is a Habit that proves very useful at times like now,
when my normal routine has been disturbed by an injury.
I don’t feel very well, and I have had a few higher calorie days,
but tracking my food gives me a feeling of stability, and the hope
that soon things will adjust, and I will be able to establish
a new normal, during my recovery period.

Easter has different individual meanings for many of us. 
For some of us it has great religious meaning.  
For others it means a new wardrobe and annual church attendance.
Many of us associate it with colored eggs and chocolate bunnies.
All these things symbolize a new beginning.

On Good Friday while in my yard i tripped and fell backwards on my left wrist,
breaking the two bones that connect my forearm to my wrist.
My left arm is in a temporary splint, and tomorrow it will get a cast.       
A side effect of my WLS 18 years ago is a restriction against all aspirin based drugs,
and my body's intolerance for many prescription pain killers. This currently limits me to
Tylenol for pain relief.. . . . Although I am not absolutely convinced that the ears of a
chocolate bunny would not provide additional assistance toward that goal.

Currently I must also use the one finger typing method which takes much more
time and effort.  This might result in shorter articles and comments for awhile.

I have several recipe videos already filmed, and will be posting them once a week
until they are gone.  After that there may be a delay before I can make more.

The Thinspiration Moment videos are much easier to do, and i've shot quite a few of them already,
so I don't anticipate an interruption of that function.

I am continuing to weigh daily, and to track my food.  When I get my cast, I will use that scale
number as my beginning stabilized  weight for maintenance and weight-loss. Hopefully this
will give me a small weight-loss to look forward to when my arm heals and the cast is removed.

Life happens.    Behaviors leading to Weight-loss and Maintenance need to continue
despite individual difficulties and setbacks.  Each of us goes through hard times on occasion,
and sometimes we respond with an inappropriate use of food. The same for good times.
But each day, each hour, each minute is a new beginning for us.