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 willing to give up isn’t a “get out of responsibilities free” card – it’s not something that you pull out when things have gotten to the point where you don’t feel like dealing with them any more.

The point of being willing to walk away is that you are willing to accept the consequences of leaving – because you feel that it’s better than the alternative.

By being willing to let go, you are proving yourself to be strong and powerful. It’s saying that you value yourself and your boundaries more than some nebulous fear.

It’s saying that you’re brave enough and strong enough to take your chances, rather than stay in a specific situation any longer.  You are explicitly demonstrating that you have the confidence and the courage to do what’s right for you.

You’re not giving up. You’re choosing to leave on your own terms.

                            
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.    
                             
ADOPTING  too many voices and BELIEVING in too many “right ways” or  “only ways” of doing things can make for a really noisy head.  It can cause a person to live in a perpetual state of feeling like they’re letting themselves AND all those inner gurus down.  That can wind up as one big disappointment fest all the time, no matter what you do, you hear the nagging of some disappointed inner guru.

When dealing with conflicting voices and conflicting beliefs, ….my own key solution is to work to develop a strong sense of who I am, and what I’m doing, and what are my own basic non-negotiable beliefs,…. before I listen and accept the beliefs of others…including those who are “experts”.  There are a lot of “experts” around these days, who will do a fabulous job at convincing us to adopt their own viewpoints, and dieting lifestyles. What I do is listen to their advice; hold that advice up to be judged by my own individual life standards; and either say:  “Yes, I can add that in” or “No, sorry that’s not a specific fit for me right now.”
I believe it is important to continue developing my own inner voice.   I listen deep down inside myself.  This is where the good stuff comes from.  Even if I make huge mistakes and rediscover something that people were pushing on me in the first place, that wisdom will then be mine - because I’ll have earned it.

There is no substitute for first-hand experience. I involve myself in various dieting experiences; pay attention to my own personal experiences;  and then listen, with honesty and sensitivity, to what personally results from those experiences.

Diet and other self-help books, the internet, and statistics are great things to generate ideas.  But ultimately it’s up to me to test how well MY life tolerates and incorporates each and every specific belief and practice. Despite how easy the “experts” make it to think otherwise,  I’m the only person that can do that for me, and you are the only person that can do that for you.