21DJC Day 4 – If You Are To Travel Back in Time to 3 Years Ago, What Advice Would You Give Yourself?

This is Day 4 of the 21-Day Journaling Challenge (21DJC) for Nov 2011. View list of tasks: 21DJC Overview.

Hi everyone – Welcome to Day 4 of 21DJC!

Yesterday’s question was: “What is your ideal diet like?“. It was interesting reading your responses. Many of you seem to be in tune with what’s best for your body, which is great! Many of you stressed on a diet that’s filled in nutrition and void of empty calories, since the latter does not benefit our body. Many of you are committed to removing unhealthy, junk food from your diet; At the same a diet with high fruits and vegetables is a common vision across the board.

Me, my ideal diet is the raw vegan diet. One that’s high in fresh fruits, vegetables, and raw nuts. I came to this conclusion a couple of years ago, though it was only made conscious during my 21-day fast in Feb this year.

At the moment I’m on a veg*n diet, because I’m still working on integrating the raw vegan diet into my lifestyle, since the society doesn’t exactly accommodate for such a lifestyle. But in time to come, I imagine I’d be on a high raw diet, before eventually transiting to a full raw diet at some point.

Ultimately all of us are different and have different needs, so go for the diet that you feel best about. There’s no need to feel compelled on a certain diet just because of what your parents, society, health magazines, or TV say. Go on a vegetarian diet if it’s in line with your beliefs in life. Go for a vegan diet if that’s what you feel is highest for your being. Go for a pescetarian lifestyle if that’s what you feel best about. Eat a meat-based diet if that’s what’s in line with your personal values and beliefs.

If you eat something only to feel bad about it afterwards, whether physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually, then it’s a cue that it’s probably not the ideal for you. This includes eating junk food on the spur of the moment, then beating yourself up over it or feeling “guilty” about it after that.

While you can argue that it’s a “treat” and you “deserve” it, the point is you yourself already acknowledge the food is bad and feel bad about eating it afterwards. This in itself suggests a misalignment in your wants/needs that needs to be worked through, vs. allowing the conflicting behavior to perpetuate.

Either you have a candy bar because you *truly* feel it’s the best thing for your body, or you don’t have that. You can’t be thinking “this candy bar isn’t good” and still have that in your ideal diet. That doesn’t make any sense at all; it’s a contradiction in itself. Ideal means something that’s the highest of it all; something you acknowledge to be the best of the best for yourself.

In the end, your ideal diet should be one which you feel 110% emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually both in the short-run and in the long-run - nothing less than that. By having a clear idea of what your ideal diet is, it brings awareness to what you want to feed your body with. This makes it easier for you to achieve this goal in the long run.

While I have a vision of what my ideal diet is, I’m far from it at the moment – there are times when I go off track with my diet due to emotional eating, lack of my desired food, or circumstances. But the important thing is I always work on getting back on track. Being on your ideal diet may not happen overnight, but the important thing is you move closer toward it, and work on integrating it into your lifestyle, day by day. In time, you realize you are exactly where you want to be.

With that said, let’s now move to today’s question!

21DJC Day 4

Today’s question is a fun one – one which involves some imagination and thinking outside of our current framework of time:

If You Are To Travel Back in Time to 3 Years Ago, What Advice Would You Give Yourself?

How old would you be 3 years ago? What was happening at that time? What would you say to yourself? And why?

(Today’s question can be found in #21 of 101 Important Questions To Ask Yourself In Life.)

Put on your reflection cap and let your thoughts flow. Below is an empty form which you can use to write your answers to the question. Treat it as your private 21DJC journaling “room”, if you will. You will be seeing this form every day, for the 21 days of the challenge. There’s a button for you to keep track of your word count too, if you’re interested.

(Note you will not see the form below if you’re viewing this in your email client. Visit the actual post online to see the form.)

If You Are To Travel Back in Time to 3 Years Ago, What Advice Would You Give Yourself?

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Your Task Today:

1. Reflect and answer today’s question. There’s no word limit – whether minimum or maximum. Write as few or as many words as you want. It’s all up to what you want to express!
2. Share your answer. After you are done writing, copy and paste your answer in the comments area and post it there.
3. Check out other participants’ answers. Other participants will be sharing their answers too, so feel free to read and reply to their answers. This is a group course, so let’s support each other in these 21 days.