Putting it on Paper

Author Mike Stackpole, once said something to the effect of the hardest part of writing is putting your butt in the chair.  For painting, it is putting it on paper. There are a thousand things you can do once you are in your work space, prep work, cleaning, preliminary sketches, choosing what to paint.  But it is at the point where you touch brush to paper that the process really begins. I have been working on the list of prompts for #WorldWaterColorMonth and have been busily putting them on Paper. While some of them I love and I am thrilled with how well they came out. Other painting I like only a portion of, or dislike. I am still happy that I did them.

This post is part of #Microblogmondays, an event hosted by Melissa at http://www.stirrup-queens.com/ the point of which is to create a post that is between 1 word to 8 sentences long at home, on your blog, rather than on other social media. Welcome to those visiting from there.

Limiting beliefs and Lion’s Mane Mushrooms

 What is a limiting belief?

A limiting belief is something that holds you back only because you believe it. It sounds silly but when I googled limiting beliefs examples I got  “About 392,000 results (0.65 seconds) “, which tells me a lot of people have a lot of limiting beliefs.

I have been stuck in a ” Must diet” frame of mine for so long that I never realized that I could ever be not dieting and making healthy choices. 

The idea of “eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite” was something I did not think I could do. It was either diet or eating as usual. 

After it finally clicked and I realized that I was putting stumbling blocks in my way, I took a look at what that sentence does and does not mean.

It does not mean nom all the comfort foods you can find. It does not mean gallons of ice cream and plates of cookies are okay. It does not mean limited, restrictive, any of the many hijacked meaning of the word “healthy” Low fat, low carb, high fiber, sugar free, and so on.

What it does mean is flexible, pleasurable, satisfying, appetizing and filling.

So in other words, instead of dieting I am going to eat in a way that is tasty and positive?  That sounds great to me, but I am looking for the catch because there has to be a catch.  The catch is that I need to eat foods that are pleasurable, satisfying, appetizing and filling.   When I am being honest with myself, a heavy meal of comfort foods is only pleasurable at the beginning, and can be downright unpleasant if I pass full and overeat.

Full of the possibilities of tasty pleasurable eating, I head off the the first farmers market of the season with my daughter. I was excited to try something new and fresh and tasty.  As we are just barely into spring here in New England, there was a natural limit to the choices, but the first booth was a mushroom vendor. I almost passed it by because my daughter does not like mushrooms, but decided to look anyway.  She surprised me by being interested in the very unusual looking Lion’s Mane mushroom. She was not letting her dislike of white mushrooms get in her way of trying something new. By being open to change she avoided the problem of limiting beliefs. It was a reminder to me that when that little voice in your head says can’t, it is important to question why and see if it is a real limit or a limiting belief.

What limiting belief can you let you of today? I would love to hear about it.