Introduction:
The following are some early chapters of my ebook on personal empowerment.
If this page attracts sufficient interest, I may produce more along the same lines.
Text:
Men are both selfish and social creatures. We want what we want but we also want other people’s approval. What we want can please or displease others. This has consequences.
It is interesting that Christ said that a Christian would be a “sign of contradiction”; thus the World would hate him. Whereas, to succeed materially in this world, the easiest way is to be agreeable to everyone, without being seen as effete.
Put simply, you get people what they want, while they see you have some spine, and thus you rise. You present the best picture of yourself possible and hide the negatives. You are positive even when you make criticisms. You help rather than hinder. You’re fun to be with and when you’re not, you withdraw or keep silent.
You follow what trade you can excel at and thus, clients come to you.
A Christian knows his body will die and the world will end for him. Thus the game of life is played for more noble ends: his spiritual perfection and that of others. He can still succeed in worldly terms but his trials take on a differerent quality; they are sent by God for his instruction, rather than the mere suffering and darkening of the mind that doing evil causes to the wicked.
Education & Career Planning.
As a child you can’t choose your early education. It depends on the will and the means of your parents. In your teenage years you can exercise some choice. Here are some points you may want to consider:
1. Classical studies enhance all others. A knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin makes learning all other disciplines easier. This is because western culture is based on classical Greek and Roman literature, via the Renaissance. Technical terms often have their roots in Greek and Latin words. This is because Greek and Latin were the languages of the earliest copies of the Christian Bible, and Latin was the language of the Roman empire, and thus these were the languages of Christian monks. As monks were the first educators in the West, they became the languages shared by educated people, scientists and scholars.
Latin became the ‘lingua franca’, or common language of educated people all over Europe. It overcame cultural and linguistic boundaries. Knowledge of Latin and Greek makes learning medicine easier, for example, as body parts and diseases were first named by doctors who wanted to make sure their foreign colleagues understood what they were writing about.
2. Languages are good, but choose carefully. A great many people have a major European language as their second one. You will make yourself more employable if you learn the language of a third world country with substantial natural resources, if you follow my drift.
3. At the other end of the scale, modern subjects and the humanities, like ‘media studies’ or ‘English literature’ or ‘psychology’ seem very attractive, because they have a glamour, or people think they know them already. This makes their study arduous, because they’re oversubscribed, so colleges try to weed out the unfit by making the courses difficult.
A good degree (a ‘2.1’ or better in the British Isles) in these subjects can be a passport to middle-management or junior executive status in any company. It shows you can apply yourself, do research, and make presentations, which is the essence of information-based careers.
However, they’re not terribly useful in themselves. They make a nice adornment, but that’s it. You’ll find you’ll have to learn a new ‘trade’ after you graduate.
4. Sciences. Good choice, ‘though undervalued, and underpaid. There should be a shortage of chemists and physicists at the time of writing, as clever minds flock to more lucrative professions. There is a steep learning curve, and ridiculous levels of specialisation are required. Scientific training will stand you in good stead in later life.
5. Mathematics. The language of numbers. Only a fool ignores this subject. The farther you can go in this subject the better it will be for you in later life. By numbers a man can measure almost all.
6. History. A pillar of many other disciplines. A man with no knowledge of history is truly ignorant, ‘though it depends of the purity or provincialism of what he’s been taught. History is simply the present badly remembered. The past shapes the future. Empires rise and fall. The wise historian can predict the rise and fall of his own.
7. Economics. Well worthwhile. Useful for future businessmen. But beware: only one economist in a generation is a true prophet and that is by mere gambling odds!
A quick rating of common careers:
Lawyer. Nice work if you can get it, and if you are good at it. Lots of competition, however, and your qualifications are not internationally valid. A good springboard to a political career.
Doctor. Always a good choice. A noble profession. A lengthy education is required, and the internship is a form of slavery. Don’t attempt it unless you genuinely have a vocation; it’s not just a job, or for the status. Doctors are being denied the respect they once had, and are the subject of litigation and intense bureaucratic meddling. Getting a good practice is not easy either. A good and ambitious doctor can make what he wants of his life.
Armed Forces / Police. A noble calling, arduous, underpaid, dangerous. People are wary of you. A springboard to gainful employment if you retire or leave with a good rank. You are the last line of defence against the barbarians, a fact that seems to be forgotten in the early 21st century. Soldiers and police are treated like peons in peacetime, and like heroes when trouble’s a-brewing.
Civil Service. A good choice. Nice benefits, most favourable contract of employment, pension. You’ll never be rich, but you’ll survive ok.
Office jobs. Only worthwhile if you have an executive position. If you bring in the sales, they’ll plead with you to stay. If you’re middle management, it’s nice, but watch your back!
Otherwise, you’re a serf. You’re off the streets, and out of the weather, and you MAY make enough to pay the mortgage, but you’ll live in fear for the rest of your life. A special exception for secretaries and accountants; they are always in demand, and can easily switch or find new jobs.
Trades (Plumber, Carpenter, Mechanic, Electrician etc). Turn and turn again. A true craftsman can name his hours and his rate, these days. Apprenticeships are a thing of the past, so a skilled, honest, reliable craftsman is a rare jewel, and consequently can have revenge on the middle classes who both need and fear him. I don’t think they’re going to invent radical new means of transferring water, in the way new materials may have replaced wood for the carpenter, but they’re still a good bet for a man who’s good with his hands.
Unskilled Labourer. You’re a human donkey. If you make a living, and you don’t get crippled by it, you’ve done all right.
Artists (Actors, Writers, Dancers, Visual arts, Musicians). You’ll be poor for life. High failure rate. Patchy employment. These may seem attractive to the children of middle-class families viz “I have been an artisan so my son may be a clerk so his son may be an artist”, but it’s no way to make a living. Do not be seduced by the glamour of these occupations; for all save the very few the glamour is on the surface only.
Computing (IT/Programming). Topical, but a steep and constant learning curve; your current knowledge will be completely out of date within five years.
Self-employment. Needs careful thought. If you’re sure you can make money by the bucketload, then follow your dream. If not, get a job. There’s so much more to worry about if you’re self-employed. You’ll work twelve-hour days. If it’s your calling, then these hours will pass like minutes; if not, you’ll knacker yourself through over-work and worry.
Priest/Social Worker/Nurse. You’ll get your reward in heaven, and job satisfaction. You’ll need the patience of Job, as you’ll be dealing with irascible and stupid people on a daily basis.
Politics. If you’ve got charisma, and a dream, go to, my son. Not a noble profession. You may sacrifice your character and good name. Do not be afraid, or falter. In the end, it’s just part of the great game, and everyone is as fearful as you are, so bluster it out if needs be, and stand firm.
If you are a good public speaker, and presentable, you can go far. If you have a vision, you will take others with you. 98% of people are wracked by doubt all of the time. We are drawn to people sure of themselves.
Politics affects everything; people who say they are a-political are either fools or crypto-Conservatives.
Academia (teaching). A noble profession. Most devalued, these days, because more common. Even professors have to churn out papers just to retain tenure. Poorly paid too, and teachers get a lot of ‘stick’ from both parents AND students, when they’re not filling out forms.
Journalism. Greatly over-rated. You’ll write what the editor wants, and the editor will in turn publish what the owner wants. Forget it.
Farming. Not something you can really choose, as you usually have to inherit land. A good farmer is an energetic man with many acres. Otherwise you’re a peasant, and you’ll labour and fret for your bread. Again, a devalued profession these days, ‘though that may change if our international civilization falters.
In the end:
You don’t choose a vocation; a vocation chooses you. Keep that in mind as you fret about what to do with yourself. A part of you already knows; listen to it.
In any job or career, you should take time to stand outside yourself, and ask what you are doing, and why. All careers ultimately end with the grave, and a paragraph in a newspaper. All that varies is the cost of the coffin, the size of the paragraph, and the circulation of the newspaper.
See clearly, and without bias. Don’t let the glamour of this world blind you to its imperfections. Don’t hasten busily to an empty house and empty life. There are more important things than an office of your own, and a key to the executive lavatory.
Addendum
Here is the great secret of economic success:
Sell a skill or a good which:
1. You love doing;
2. You can do to a high standard;
3. Is in high demand;
3a. Is low-competition;
4. You can make a fat net profit on.
Miss out one or more from this list and you will struggle.
How To Look Younger
Do …
1. Moisturise
I think this word is a bit of a misnomer, as you can’t actually put moisture (water) into your flesh for any useful length of time. You can certainly, however, oil it up (like leather!), and trap water next to the skin.
After every wash, put Johnson’s Baby Oil (or any inert oil or fat, even butter!) on your face. Put it especially on your laughter-lines (around the eyes), your forehead, around the mouth and on the neck.
You don’t need expensive ointments; independent studies show these are a con. Women desperately want to recapture lost youth; a youth lost because they did some or all of the‘don’ts’ below. They can be sold anything, when just a bit of oil would do them.
2. Eat good food
Eat plenty of fruit, fish and vegetables, drink water.
A healthy diet makes for a healthy body, and health makes you look younger.
3. Sleep.
MOST IMPORTANT.
At least eight hours.
Go to bed about 10pm or as early as possible.
You’ve had enough when you bound out of bed in the morning, full of energy; if you don’t, you need more, or you went to bed after midnight.
Lack of sleep is very ageing. I have read that sleep is when our body is repaired by the Holy Spirit. Our spirit leaves it and walks in the psychic plane; we remember this as dreams. Angels then get to work on our body.
If you don’t get enough sleep you look haggard i.e. old. Sleep deprivation is akin to being a zombie; your IQ is less, memory poorer, and your reactions slower. You become more prone to disease.
Conversely, a good night’s kip will make you look years younger.
Don’t …
1. Smoke.
Smoking constricts the capillaries in your face. This is why smokers look pale. It ages the skin. It makes your hair lank.
A smoker is essentially in a constant state of ill-health; weaker immune system, less energy, less stamina. In time smoking can lead to serious disease. It lenghtens recovery time from other diseases. Doctors tend to write off smokers; they know their work is being wasted.
Cigarettes contain poisons like formaldehyde, ammonia, arsenic, and benzene. The reason people crave them is because they also contain nictotine, which is more addictive than heroin. You can kick heroin in five days; nicotine takes weeks, even months.
If cigarettes were invented today, they could not be sold, as they are a very serious health hazard. The cigarette industry is very rich, highly taxed, and so has bought off Government opposition.
Also, the Government can’t make a nation of addicts go cold turkey; there’d be uproar, and massive crime.
2. Drink alcohol.
Again, alcohol is a poison. Drunkenness is a mild form of poisoning; hence its alternative name intoxication.
I once knew some Australian girls when I was squatting in London. They used to ‘party hearty’. One of them was very pretty. After 6 months she looked like she’d aged ten years; 20 going on 35.
When I was very young I used to wonder why adults looked so old; tired and fed up before their time. Certainly life has its disappointments, but we help death mark our card early on.
3. Sunbathing
In neolithic times men used to cure animal hides by exposing them to the sun. This was the earliest form of tanning; they were making leather.
This is what’s happening to sunbather’s skin. That’s why 35 year old sunbathers look 45, and 45 year old sunbathers have skin the texture of a horse’s bridle.
Sitting in the sun for hours is weak-minded. Look at the great beauties, the older ones. They kept well out of the sun; their skin is milky white. You don’t see their sisters in magazines, who, for a season’s healthy glow, sacrificed their looks forever.
4. Dye or bleach your hair.
Unless your hair is grey or mousey, leave off putting chemicals on it. If you are healthy, your hair will reflect this. Bleaching is bad for your hair, and you may damage the follicles. If the dye doesn’t suit your skin tone, it won’t make you look good anyway.
5. Wear formal clothes.
Dress younger, look younger!
6. Wear a beard or moustache, or long hair (for men)
If your hair is thinning and long, and/or you have a beard or moustache, you’ll look older by ten years. Conversely, a short hair-cut and a clean-shaven face takes years off you. Cut off your sideburns; voila! instant youth.
7. Worry.
If you have problems, resolve to deal with them, or deliberately avoid them; but decide, and then put them out of your mind.
Stress and worry make you haggard, and pre-dispose you to disease. They keep you awake at night, and ruin the quality of your sleep.
Meditate. Resolve your problems before you go to sleep at night.
8. Have cosmetic surgery.
This is a trap. Because a man has M.D. after his name doesn’t mean he has the skill of a Michaelangelo or Da Vinci. That’s what you need to remodel a human face.
Why? Because our perceptions of human beauty rely on very subtle clues in another’s face; small lines, dimples, contours, expressions.
A cosmetic surgeon cuts these out, and you are left with a mask. You lose some of your personality. You become a type; a Hollywood social x-ray, a waxen-faced thing. Don’t do it, girls!
We are not machines; cut us, take a part out, replace it, and we are never quite the same again.
9. Over-diet / over-exercise.
This makes you look scrawny and haggard. A slightly fleshy face looks younger; the wrinkles fill out a bit.
A bit of exercise gets the blood flowing, and reminds your muscles they exist.
Too much exercise (more than two hours continuously a day), a low carbohydrate diet, and you look haggard; worn out, old, under par.
How To Keep Fit And Lose Weight.
This is an interesting subject. In the West, we have the ‘problem’ of overeating and lack of exercise, which leads to the deposit of fat cells in our bodies. If we were Inuit or other tribesmen, we would be pleased. A store of fat will see us through the harsh winter. It would show that we were clever enough to obtain more food than normal. We can get others to do our bidding, so we don’t need to work hard or hunt. It would show that we were healthy, and had no internal parasites. Fat is an attractive feature.
This however does not apply in the West. We find being overweight abhorrent, as we can now choose when, where, and what we eat, and we have central heating.
So to be overweight is a sign of gross self-indulgence. It also signifies our class, as the poor and working classes tend to console themselves by eating junk food.
Be aware that body types come in and out of fashion. At the time of writing to have almost no fat at all on your body is considered attractive. In the 1960’s a well rounded woman with peroxided hair was an icon of beauty. Now anoexia in women and large pectoral muscles in men (called ‘disco ass’ by homosexuals) are the desired forms. In a few years this will change again.
We seek to ape fashion in the belief that it will make us more attractive sexually, more employable, and more authoritative. It’s display behaviour. Some birds put the moulted feathers of more exotic birds in theirs, to make themselves more attractive to the opposite sex.
Also be aware that medically speaking being slightly over-weight is not harmful. The reverse, being underweight, and losing weight quickly, IS harmful. You need a balanced diet to keep your body going. The body in turn affects the mind. If you are well and wholesomely fed you feel better mentally. If not, you feel tired and grumpy, and this can affect your work and personal relations.
What IS bad about being grossly overweight, and eating ‘junk’ food?
What is gross overweight? I define it as being unable to walk up two flights of stairs without panting, or being unable to run for a bus without similar results(assuming you are healthy in other respects).
It’s not a matter purely of size, it’s a matter of fitness. If you can’t see your own genitalia by looking straight down, you’re overweight. There is also the height-weight ratio.
If you are grossly overweight it’s likely that the arteries feeding your heart are being furred up with fatty deposits over the years, which may lead to a heart attack.
Your heart also has to do more work to pump blood around your body. Your skeletal system has to support more weight, hence you may get backache. More seriously you become a target for other human beings, because you look different, and they know you’re slower and can’t run after them and beat them up!
This is the main problem; you’re sending out a signal that you’re slow and lumbering.
In the event of crisis, you’ll not be able to outrun it. In the event of a hunt, you’ll not be able to run after the prey. You’re a liability. That makes you unattractive.
Being overweight in our Western society also signifies a lack of self-control; we have lots of food, but you can’t moderate your eating.
It’s also a pointer to your class; working class people tend to pile on AND KEEP ON the kilos, as they can’t afford personal trainers and expensive, healthier foods to get their weight back down.
What is junk food? I define junk food as food which is highly processed, fatty, sugary, or chock-full-of-additives. With this food you aren’t nourishing yourself, and are storing up health problems for later.
A quick rule of thumb :
The fancier, more garish, more moronic, and more expensive the packaging,
And the longer the process of manufacture,
And the greater the number of ingredients,
And the greater the number of these ingredients that are not food in themselves,
And the higher proportion of sugar, fat and salt…
The more likely it is be be ‘junk’.
The further from the field it goes, the crappier it becomes, until one can eat crisps (potato chips) and drink colas which are almost completely removed from anything our ancestors might have recognised as edible or potable.
Pigs will not drink chlorinated water if they can help it. Animals will turn their noses up at our ‘snacks’. They may not be so dumb after all.
So, what to do if you want to wear the slinky black dress, or not spill out of your business suit?
Five things:
1. Make sure first that you’re not being neurotic and overly body conscious.
Meditate. Try to catch yourself naked unawares in a full length mirror. Find out your ideal height-weight ratio. Get some amateur photos taken of yourself in casual dress. Try and be detached and objective.
Overweight is sometimes a state of mind instead of body. What trauma or childhood inadequacy causes you to see yourself as fat and undesirable, when medically you’re normal, or just a little full figured?
The most extreme example of this is anorexia; the perception of being overweight, based on self-hatred and self-doubt, which turns into a killer psychological disease.
The sufferer goes so far in dieting that the body in effect rules and ruins the mind, and they can’t be persuaded back to normal eating patterns. They achieve their subconscious goal – extinction.
If you are definitely a fatty:
2. Meditate. Try to home in on the reason you are overweight.
Is it genetic; are your family ‘big-boned’? If not, what need are you trying to fill by stuffing yourself; are you anxious, insecure, do you have family or money or sexual troubles? If so deal with THEM and your need to eat will be easier to beat.
Eating is pleasurable; we get a rush of blood sugar which makes us temporarily feel good, and having a full stomach makes us feel sleepy and calmed down. Are you going for the effect rather than the nourishment?
3. Change your diet; eat simpler, less processed, less over-prepared and overcooked food. Get back to the basics. Substitute fruit for candies, wholemeal bread and boiled potatoes for potato chips, lean steak for burgers, water instead of fizzy drinks. Eat a grape or a piece of orange instead of a candy; you get a better ‘buzz’, and it’s healthier for you. Another benefit is eating whole, natural food is you fill up quickly while eating less. The horror of junk food is that it’s got loads of fats and sugars in it while not being physicallysubstantial; you can eat a few ounces of fat in a second.
Basically, if a chimp wouldn’t eat it, you shouldn’t eat it. Yes, I KNOW a chimp could probably get hooked on junk food. All right, try this; if an athlete preparing for a track meeting wouldn’t eat it, you shouldn’t.
Have three meals a day only. Have a proper breakfast; people tend to skip this and then have snacks later to keep themselves going. This is folly.
NO snacks in between; let your belly growl. You’re going to train it to need less. It will protest, as it’s used to being big, but it will adjust in time.
Stay away from people and places which remind you of your old treats. Try not to let on you’re dieting; your ‘friends’ will try to get you off it, or tempt you for fun.
4. Take more exercise. Your can do light exercise, or better yet work it into your daily routine: don’t walk when you can run, don’t run where you could cycle, leave the car in the garage. Do more household chores the hard way. Take the stairs instead of the lift.
If your work or chores involves exercise it’s easy to get your subconscious to go along with it than if you specifically set out to exercise; it seems less of a trial, and you’re killing two birds with one stone.
Exercise without pain:
Stretch a little before taking exercise.
If you’ve been meditating you will be more aware of your body. The idea of stretching is to loosen muscles up so you don’t strain them by sudden flexion. Muscles are meat, you can massage them and work them to make them a little more tender, or damage stiff ones by sudden hard exercise. Stretching also engages and prepares your mind for your work-out.
Avoid the mania of hard constant exercise; those fanatics who take more and more until it hurts are damaging themselves, and feeding an obsession. The paradox of the sportsman is this: many of them have injuries, and are not truly healthy at all! How many famous athletes have knee and ligament injuries that make them near-cripples before their time?
Exercise for it’s own sake is harder, too; part of us can see no immediate gain to doing it, and puts up mental and emotional barriers.
Conversely, if our exercise involves has another goal besides itself; cleaning the house, digging the garden, jogging to the shops to get a paper, our subconscious is much more likely to go along with it, because it can see a tangible gain.
Pull-ups.
Pull yourself up by a bar or even a sturdy door. Builds up the pectoral and arm muscles.
Push-ups.
Have a similar effect.
Walking.
You can do this with no preparation(!). Walk different routes, and work it into your daily routine, so it doesn’t become a bore.
Trotting.
By trotting I don’t mean running or ‘jogging’; too much effort! Just move a little faster than normal, at your own pace.
Dancing.
Great exercise, and fun. Dancing to music also encourages you to go on longer; that’s why a regular beat was used to get more work out of slaves.
Swimming.
Swimming is good exercise. You can lark around (instead of swimming length after length – boring!), and it uses a different set of muscles. Get a goggles and some flippers; again, it makes it more interesting. And you can’t snack while in the water!
NOTE: Real physical pain should not be a feature of exercise. Pain is your body’s way of telling you to stop what you are doing. So don’t push yourself. Maniacs say “no pain, no gain”. The only gain you get from pain is masochistic pleasure. You will be exchanging one obsession for another if you go down this route.
5. Do not take special medications or diet foods if you can help it. Do not try specialist diets, unless it’s just to impress your friends i.e. for the sake of appearances (!).
Diet medications are usually amphetamine or stimulant-based; they perk you up, so you don’t feel depressed or hungry. Soldiers use amphetamines in war; they keep you keen, and you don’t feel hungry. The trouble is you become physically addicted to them, instead of food, and you’re worse off in the end. They rot your body and your mind, and you have exchanged one fixation for another, more urgent one.
Eating food supplements will take off the pounds; you’ll lose a few pounds to begin with in ANY diet anyway. However what will happen when you stop eating this expensive food substitute? Unless your will power is engaged, you’ll revert to your old habits.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a HUGE industry out there making money off would-be dieters; this book is part of it.
Companies play on people’s neuroses; they fatten them and they stoke them. They create needs where none existed. These false needs are then satisfied, and the customer has the illusion of personal progress.
Very many people want to lose weight, and very many companies want to make money off them. Very many dieters want a quick and easy fix that bypasses their will and gets the pounds off; very many writers and manufacturers want to persuade them that they have this fix for sale.
It’s part of the capitalist culture; for $30 you can buy the solution to any problem, no matter how complex. This is a LIE, of course. Part of you knows it, but you’ll pay up, because it’s easier than making sacrifices and hard work.
Losing weight involves an act of WILL. If you’re the sort of person who diets for a bit and then ‘rewards’ yourself with a cream cake, WHO are you trying to fool? Your subconscious, your friends? You won’t fool the bathroom scales, or that dress you’re trying to get into.
I once saw a overweight lady in a corner shop with a ‘Snickers’ bar in one hand and a pint of skimmed milk in the other; this is a kind of mental illness. Eating trash and compensating by eating a denatured version of real food! If you’re this sort of fool stop reading now; you need to go out into the middle of a big field and have a talk with yourself.
Perhaps you diet because you feel pressurised to keep in with your friends? Women love to eat and gossip about food; they get great mileage out of it. Is your dieting a social act? Do you love to gossip to your friends about your weight loss or gain?
Perhaps part of you would like to be slim, especially on public occasions. The other, deeper, part wants to gorge itself stupid on WHATever it likes, WHENever it likes.
Our forebears were keen to fatten themelves up when they could, because they knew lean months might lie ahead. Women would have to bear children, and would need to lay down a store of fat. You don’t have these excuses, but it’s hard to escape your genetic programming. And eating is lovely, isn’t it? It may be your one consolation in an otherwise miserable life.
So, to fix your weight, fix the other problems in your life, then staying off the snacks will be much easier. Easy for me to say, but that’s what I think it boils down to.
Another aspect of successful dieting is your IMAGINATION. Can you actually see yourself in your mind’s eye as a slimmer person? Can you see the slimmer you wearing that slinky dress, putting on that 32 inch waist trousers, going to the party in full confidence? Twice a day you should mentally visualise yourself as a slim person; it’s a way of letting your subconscious know what you want. Talking to yourself is no good; make pictures in your mind.
What you are trying to do here is to make it seem as if your weight loss is already a done thing. You can see it in your mind, you’ve made a picture of it, it’s almost a tangible reality. If you put positive, emotional energy into it, That which is out There may agree with you, and you will in time become slim.
The reverse of this is merely worrying about your weight, making half-hearted attempts at dieting, cutting out one treat while stuffing yourself with others. You are more than the part of you that’s reading this book; it may be convinced, but the GREATER part of you will be sitting there hands-folded saying “yeah, I know what you REALLY want, and it isn’t the trouble of dieting, you tart!”
Weight Gain And Age.
We tend to put on weight as we enter middle age.This is because we have settled down with a long-term sexual partner, or have given up hope of finding one. We lose our keeness, our ‘edge’; the body’s equivalent of amphetamines. Food becomes more interesting, or a solace. We also tend to go to fewer places and/or travel by car. Our youthful fascinations no longer drive us; rather we spend our time avoiding bothersome activities. Also, eating becomes a consolation, as we become less able and less interested in participating in other recreations.
To counter this, one usually find that one becomes less interested in the sickly treats of one’s youth; we tend to lose our sweet tooth. If not, one can help this process along by finding some other passion. You need to find an all-consuming activity which takes your mind off food, and one that ideally involves exercise.
Again, this involves finding out what, if any, vocation we have in life. What do you REALLY want to do? If it’s nothing, then that’s fine. Once you acknowledge this, you’ll find your peace of mind improves, and your craving for food will be less.
Otherwise find some activity you can devote yourself to, that engages your whole being. Eating is often a recreation; find a nobler one.
29th Nov. 2008: The simplest way to lose weight is not to eat. Fast for religious purposes; you gain merit in Heaven and you lose a few pounds.