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.

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.

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. 

 There is some type of technical computer code glitch between Internet Explorer, DietHobby,
and YouTube that occasionally keeps a daily blog from working properly with embedded videos. 

So, when this occurs while I'm posting an article,
I've decided to deal with it by posting that video as a second separate blog,
as I did here today.

I call it living in the solution, not the problem.

Many people believe that all the obese have to do
is go through bariatric surgery
and they will magically became "Naturally Thin".

No calorie counting.
No food monitoring at all.
Just eat what they want
because their body can only tolerate a limited amount of food.

More than 18 years ago, BEFORE my weight-loss surgery,
I knew that I could NEVER become "naturally thin".

Even then, I knew that such a wish was merely a "pipe dream",
a totally unrealistic fantasy...
on a level with a wish for the ability to sprout wings and fly;

I was aware I would still WANT
to eat far more food than my body could tolerate.
However, the reason I went through what was, at the time,
a very serious Experimental open surgery, 

which was quite a costly procedure;
which caused Immense pain for several months and long-term discomfort;
which required a 2 week stay in a distant city, for both myself and my husband,
........since we were aware of only one surgeon in California performing them at the time;
which required 6 weeks off work without pay,....and during that time
........I still had to pay my office overhead expenses including my staff's salaries;

....was due to the belief
that I would never again need to closely monitor my food intake, 

and I would always be able to eat only small amounts of what I wanted
because my body could only tolerate amounts that made and kept me slender.

I believed that this One Choice
would make all my future eating choices easier,
and that it would become a form of automatic,
involuntary portion control,
requiring little effort or thought from me.

Time proved this to be UNTRUE,

It is amazing how frequently and consistently
one can inadvertently make oneself sick, via one's eating choices,
and no matter how painful the experience, repeat it over and over again.
That personal gluttonous characteristic is not changed by surgery.

However, for me the experience was an extremely valuable one,
and, as does almost everyone else who has ALSO had a similar surgery,
I can honestly say that I would make the same choice again.