As we physically travel from one place to another, we walk or drive on roads or paths or trails.  When doing this we have the capability of retracing our steps and going a different way because, generally, the surface of the roads or paths or trails are hard and fixed, and most of the time, they don’t really change that much.

However, there is another type of travel through life which is based on the life choices we make. Once a choice is made, we can’t just retrace our path and start over again because the circumstances and the people who are involved have changed.

Once words have been said, and lives affected, things can never return back to the original form. Things might be neutral BEFORE the choice, but AFTER the choice there will never again be neutral ground involving that particular choice.

I look back over my life and remember the different forks in the road that I have encountered. My choices have all worked together to bring me right here, right now, to who and what and where I am today.

There’s no point in wasting time and energy longing for some previous time or place, or believing that I can recapture past feelings or experiences by returning to some prior place.
       
It’s important to enjoy the journey wherever I am, because things change.
       
When I find myself at a fork in the road, I evaluate the options and how they will affect my principles and values. Each of us has a set of values that define who we are. If one option requires me to compromise my own personal values, no matter how lucrative it might seem to be, it will not be worth the price.
       
Does the choice feel right deep down inside? 
If it doesn’t feel right, I can’t force it to be right.
       
I get input from others that have traveled a similar road. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Learning things from others can help me make a wiser decision, so I get as much information and knowledge as I can before taking steps forward.
       
Once I’ve made a firm decision, I go forward working to focus my energy onto the new path and the new tasks it involves. I try to eliminate “second-guessing” myself, because doubts will only dilute my efforts.
 
Life is continually changing. We acquire new knowledge and understanding all throughout our journey. After making a choice and traveling on that specific road for a while, if I feel a need to re-evaluate, that means I have come to another fork in my road. Life is full of forks in the road.  We will always need to make new decisions.

 

SPOILER …. Things will turn out exactly the way they were meant to.
No matter what choices we make, ultimately everything will be all right. 

I view DietHobby as a personal, digital, online “scrapbook”.

“Scrapbooking” is a method, an art for preserving, presenting, and arranging personal information, such as pictures, articles or other material, in a book or other storage facility.

When I post here at DietHobby, I am sharing my digital scrapbook.

By “sharing”, I mean that I am allowing others to use or have something of mine, something I possess. 

That something that I “possess” is various information, my own opinions, or selected opinions of others that I find to be personally helpful or interesting.

Sometimes when discussing DietHobby with others, I’ve been asked: “Who is your target audience?”

A "target audience" is particular group of people, identified as the intended recipient of a message. This is a marketing concept.

Marketing involves the transfer of goods or information from a seller to buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.

Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable, and engaging content to a target audience with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customers. 

It is also about creating interesting information that your customers are passionate about so they will actually pay attention to you.

Selling vs. Sharing

There is a difference between
sharing and selling.
Selling is good.
Sharing is good.
They’re not actually the same, though.

Example 1:

When Luke goes to childcare, he receives two cookies as a snack.
If he says to another child:
          “Hey, wanna share my cookies?”
…he means,
          “I have something to give to you, and I expect nothing in return.”

It's a matter of: This is mine, and I would like to GIVE you some of it.
That’s “sharing”.

Example 2:

Sarah is aware that if she wants to move into a new house, first she will need to do something with her old one.
If she says to someone:
         “I’m thinking of selling my house.”
… she means,
          “I have something, and I would like to exchange it for money.”

It's a matter of: This is mine, and I would like money for it.
That’s “selling”.

Example 3:

Tim goes to the store to buy a new shirt.
If the clerk at the store says:
          “I’m so excited to share this shirt with you.”
… she means,
          “I’m really uncomfortable with SELLING so I’ll call it SHARING, and maybe you won’t notice it’s not free.”

It's a matter of: "This is mine and I would like money for it, but I don’t want to draw your attention to that".

Lesson:

Be aware of sellers who don’t use selling words.
Sharing is free.

“Sharing” means I’m allowing others to use or have something that I possess.

“Selling” means I’m willing to exchange or deliver something for money or some equivalent value, or to persuade others to buy things.

 

There is no marketing, no customers,
no buying or selling here at DietHobby.
No "targeted audience". 
I post my information online where it can be accessed
by the others who choose to do so. For me, it’s a matter of:

“Here it is.  Look or don’t look.
Take what you like and leave the rest”.

DietHobby was created for my own personal, recreational enjoyment, and to further my own interest in Dieting as a Hobby. Although I am pleased to share it with others, and I hope it will prove to be helpful to those who share my interests, this is not a primary goal of mine.  Everyone, including me, talks inside their head. Here at DietHobby, I'm choosing to visually record some of my own thoughts, so I can easily access them at future times, and share them with those who are interested.

Note: My "Ask Grandma" videos, are a bit of an exception in that they were prepared for a specific YouTube population during a time when YouTube was an ongoing community.   The original videos were deleted by a hacker. Deleted with each of them were the many thousands of views earned, and the many hundreds of comments posted by viewers, along with ratings, and the original detailed descriptions and annotations posted by me, Dr. Collins, the YouTube Grandma on my first YouTube channel, DietHobby. All 50 of these videos are now posted here at DietHobby in GRANDMA'S HOUSE.

My behavior is based on principles rather than rules.

A "Rule" externally compels you, through force, threat or punishment, to do the things someone else has deemed good or right. People follow or break rules.

A "Principle" internally motivates you to do the things that seem good and right to you.

The outside world, including all rewards and punishment, can only provide information.  It doesn’t make me do anything.  My inside world is what actually causes me to do things. 

While “Rules” come from others, “Principles” come from inside.

A reliance on external control results in an unwillingness to accept personal responsibility and recognize that our lives are largely the product of the choices we make.

We take information in through our senses, understand it based on our knowledge, and evaluate it against our personal values. We actively construct perceptions that we believe are identical to what exists in the “real world.” Whether they accurately reflect reality or not is essentially irrelevant. We live our lives based upon the perceptions we develop.

William Glasser’s primary contribution to the field of psychology relates to the understanding of what he calls “total behavior”.  Behavior is made up of four components: Acting, Thinking, Feeling, and Physiology.  Change any component of total behavior, and the other components change as well.

We have little direct control of our Feelings,  but we almost always have some control over our Acting and our Thinking.  Our Physiology … the involuntary mechanisms that work to keep our bodies alive and functioning (primarily at the level of organs and systems within systems), … is outside of our direct control.

All of our behavior serves a function.  The purpose of behavior is to feel better by keeping our internal scales in balance so that what we perceive comes close to what we want. 

 
Because I understand that I am motivated from the inside out, I recognize that all “diet rules” are merely suggestions for potential behavior. I am continually free to make any eating choice that I find suitable for me, and I am responsible to myself for all of those choices.


Here at DietHobby, I often post a complicated article along with my own simple discussion.

This post reverses the process, since below is a simple article to go along with my own complicated discussion. 

Diet Rules - Things as they are.
          by Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat

"I once read that “People aren’t afraid of change, they’re afraid of being changed” –  A statement I think is kind of silly considering I really don’t believe people ever change.

Sure they get older, more experienced, wiser (hopefully) but their inner nature?  I think it stays the same.

Which is why I think diet rules are silly – They try to change you.

As I type this I’m drinking an espresso, at some point today I’ll have some form of chocolate, maybe a Guinness in the evening  – These habits aren’t going to change anytime soon. So any diet that tries to force me to quit any of these habits is going to be met with resistance, and ultimately failure.

If a diet asks me to track and count and measure I’ll try, but inevitably I’ll fail. Because the diet was too far outside of my nature. For some people a diet that DOESN'T ask them to track, count and measure may be too far outside THEIR nature.

For dieting to be successful, you need to understand yourself.

If you don’t understand yourself, you can’t really respect yourself and therefore you are easily influenced by others…Jumping from diet to diet, fad to fad.

Don’t get me wrong - to lose weight you are going to have to change some habits, erase some habits and also create some new ones, and for most of us this won’t be easy, but as long as the changes are still within our nature, they will be doable.

To be successful at weight loss and changing your body you need to know:

Who you are and what you like.
You need to know the foods you really can’t do without.
The ‘bad’ habits that you have that you aren’t willing to give up.
You also need to know what you have to work with - How much room do you have for new habits?

When writing Eat Stop Eat I made sure I never tell people what they can and can’t eat. There really are no diet rules.

What you are and are not going to eat is up to you. This allows you to work with your own inner-nature while dieting. Diet Rules do the opposite – Try to force you to change in a way you may not be willing to change.

Bottom Line- Don’t think of weight loss as trying to change yourself, think of it as improving yourself in a manner that fits who you are.

Make the changes you know you can make, but when it comes to the changes you can’t make, they’ll be of no benefit to you - no matter how ‘magical’ they are made out to be, if you don’t do them, they won’t work.

Success will come naturally this way."