Personality Myth

Frustration and disappointment--they're not fun. I spent my entire drinking career (twenty-plus years) avoiding having to feel any such things, not that I knew this was what I was doing at the time. I thought I was just a party girl who liked to have fun. I didn't realise I was an A-grade emotion-avoider until I got sober and got so goddam emotional. Crikey, I was all over the show for quite a few months, lurching from one emotional state to the other. Generally, Americans enjoy a wider variety of foods for lunch than we do breakfast. However, the quintessentially American midday meal is the sandwich. One reason it's popular is that you don't need a knife, fork, plate, chair, and table to eat it. You can sit on a stump, pick up your sandwich with your hands, and eat it. Or even eat it while you're walking and talking, in true American multitasking fashion. When it comes to your blood sugar, the problem with a sandwich, of course, is the bread. The glycemic load of a couple American-size slices of bread (42 grams per slice) is approximately 300. That's your starch allotment for the entire day. So how do you get the convenience of a sandwich and the taste you're used to without shooting up your blood sugar? Learn to make a wrap--a sandwich made with a tortilla. You learn to identify the way of thinking to find different patterns, and that ability can also become extrapolated and used to help benefit other situations as well. You can look at the way that you can solve other problems as well with these methods. You can learn how you can develop new strategies and new approaches to a situation because of the resilience that you develop with these processes. I t Can Help You Control Your Mindset Along those same lines, then, you must also consider the fact that, when you use NLP, you are able to control your own mind.

You are able to take utter control over those areas in your life that you once believed to be entirely out of your grasp, such as your thoughts and your feelings. Many people regard feelings to be entirely out of your control because they are automatic and instinctive. While that may be the case, it is also important to remember that, at the end of the day, your feelings themselves are really only the product of your thought processes that you are having at any point in time. When you keep that in mind, you can understand that you can control your mindset and your emotions. You have the freedom to create the emotions and the motivation that you will need to ensure that you get the results that you need at the end of the day. It was like I was strapped into a crazy rollercoaster ride called `human experience' that I couldn't get off. Thankfully things eventually calmed down. I got used to riding the waves of emotion and managing the mood fluctuations that come naturally in life. I learned that sadness and anger (and all those other supposedly `negative' feelings) don't kill you, they're generally there for a reason, and allowing yourself to fully feel them makes them easier to deal with. Sounds so cheesy, doesn't it? But it really is true. Going through a hard or gritty time without reaching for a million bottles of wine (as I would have in the past) not only makes it quicker to process things, but also makes things clearer and easier to understand when looking back in hindsight. If I think back now to some of the hard times I've encountered since I stopped drinking, the tears I shed or stress or discomfort I experienced at the time makes perfect sense. It feels right. My reactions were appropriate--they fitted the severity of what I was going through at the time and accurately reflected how significant those events were. An 8-inch wheat tortilla has a glycemic load of 80, which is less than a single slice of bread. The glycemic loads of low-carb tortillas are even less. I discovered the low-carb wraps and love them, said tester Jane Wilchak. Wraps are easy to make. Just put all of the ingredients you would normally include in a sandwich on top of a tortilla, roll it up into a tube, and fold one end so that the filling doesn't fall out when you pick it up.

If you're packing your lunch, wrapping it in plastic wrap will help hold it together. Or, as you learned in article 9, turn your sandwich fillings into toppings for an entree-size salad, with the works--meat, cheese, nuts, olives, avocados, mushrooms, tomatoes, and any kind of dressing you like. It's a shame to put all of those sugar blockers to waste, so have a little bread if you want. Just make sure you eat it after, not before, you eat the salad. A Typical American Dinner When you are able to change the development of these thoughts and improve upon yourself, you will find that you will greatly better yourself and that is very important to remember. I t Can Help You Break Bad Habits We all have bad habits at one point in time or another. It could be that you bite your nails. It could be that you reach for the bottle whenever you have a bad day at work. It could be that you have a tendency to mindlessly snack through the day. No matter what that bad habit that you have is, it becomes important to recognize that you do have some degree of control over it. You can learn how you can defeat those negative behavioral patterns for yourself and ensure that your bad habits are entirely defeated. When you can do that, you can ensure that you are not wasting your time, your efforts, your money, or anything else. You ensure that you are living the life that you want to live and that is a huge deal at the end of the day. Even if at the time it was uncomfortable and I might have wanted to avoid or escape the difficulties (with my former best friend, vino), by simply allowing myself to sit with my feelings and experience them fully I felt more in touch with what was going on and, as a result, more resolved about what was happening. As time goes on, everything starts to appear more manageable, and it leads to a lovely overall feeling of calm as the years roll on. What I've learned since I've been working on becoming a fully emotional human being (rather than one who constantly numbs and avoids emotions) is this: it's best not to panic when the shit hits the fan and you start to feel uncomfortable emotionally. Don't automatically reach for something to make the pain go away. Slow down and trust that the feelings are there for a reason.

Try to adopt an open mindset and be curious about what your emotions are telling you. Understand the importance of letting yourself fully experience what you're going through. Trust that time will help and you'll look back and be grateful that you allowed yourself to get through with a clear head. Be gentle and kind to yourself. Self-care is really important. What could be more American than meat and potatoes? A typical American dinner frequently includes a small salad, some type of meat (usually beef or chicken), vegetables on the side, and a starch (potato, pasta, or rice), with a beverage and something sweet for dessert. Most of these foods are fine; Here's how a savvy eater would handle it. First, have a fatty snack--a handful of nuts, a piece of cheese, or a couple of pork rinds--10 to 30 minutes before you eat your meal. The fat will pass into your small intestine, which will send signals to your stomach telling it to empty more slowly. This helps keep the meal you're about to eat from being digested too quickly. It's okay to have a beverage with your fatty snack, but refrain from drinking liquids during your meal. This will prevent the food in your stomach from liquefying too quickly, which speeds digestion. Next, eat your salad. W hen it comes right down to it, your bad habits are just unconscious thoughts that are being acted out. You can learn to identify the thought, reframe it, and then take control of the problem that you are facing or the bad habit that you engage in. When you do that, you are able to make use of all sorts of techniques that you can use to break these habits--permanently. It Can Better Your Relationships Because of the simple fact that you are spending time learning to understand how you work yourself, you are able to ensure that you develop the healthy habits that you will want to encourage and facilitate to ensure that your body and mind are able to also facilitate positive relationships.

Making use of this will greatly help you understand that, at the end of the day, you can take control. It will ensure that, at the end of the day, you are in complete and utter control of what you are doing, how you do it, and how you want to do it. This means that you can ensure that the habits that you develop are healthy, beneficial, and will help ensure that your relationships are better than ever. They grow stronger, facilitated by your better habits. I t Can Improve Your Ability to Communicate And if things are too monumental to get through alone, reach out and get some professional help. There are loads of lovely trained people dotted all around our communities, just waiting to put their skills to use and help. Shit happens to all of us, all the time. There's no avoiding it. So don't try. Get stuck in and deal with it. It hurts at the time, but it is far, far better in the long run. Future you will thank you. Trust me on that. Developing new habits It will provide soluble fiber to soak up glucose and slow its absorption into your bloodstream. Consider adding nuts, olive oil, cheese, chunks of vegetables, or a vinegar-based dressing--all of which inhibit starch absorption--to your salad. You can also use vinegar as a condiment and sprinkle it on other foods. It substitutes well for salt. Eat as much of your vegetable as you can, which will add to the salad's fiber.