I wanted to continue with the post Getting Unstuck from the beginning of the month. There, I talked about becoming aware of something that is not working for you and then finding the baby steps it takes to make changes and move. Moving can be either a physical endeavor or a mental one; but I don't want to qualify it by saying "moving ahead". Any form of change will have some form of progress or regress or both. Setting a goal can help you to see what you would like to happen. It may take a little longer than you thought to get there, hence the potential for a step backward from time to time. A helpful way to sort through this step is with a pen and paper. Writing down what you want to change and putting it somewhere visible on a daily basis is a reminder, as well as a motivator. Don't know what to write or where to start...it can be as simple as writing down "I'm doing things differently from now on". I did that about 6 years ago at a difficult time in my life and was surprised how well I defended this decision (it was all I could do) and well, now my life is quite different , still with stress, but the kind I have control of now.
Here's a little gem from an article on Buddhism. I choose it because of it's relation to food and our thoughts.
Enjoy.

In our society, we spend a tremendous amount of energy controlling what goes into our bodies. We obsess about what’s in our food and where it’s grown and how it may or may not be healthy for us. If we are what we eat, we are also what we think. There’s no better metaphor for the thoughts in our brains than the modern supermarket, with aisle after aisle of both useful and superfluous items, various brands of almost exactly the same thing.

The effort of replacing negative thoughts with positive ones is like replacing an enormous bag of potato chips with a fresh peach. Instead of reaching for the thing I usually reach for when I’m ravenously hungry, which will only leave me feeling sluggish and gorged, I could reach for something less immediately desirable that will leave me feeling better in the long run.

I’m not accomplished enough to get out of the supermarket, but I can try to be more discriminating about what I put into the cart—what I chose for myself out of the endless inventory. I can reach for the peach, try as much as possible for the diet of joyful thoughts.

Read the complete article