I tweeted recently about making a new personal record as I ate altogether 7 boiled eggs in one day; three for breakfast and four with dinner consisting of salad, lentils, and salmon. Apparently this raised some questions about my cholesterol levels, and since it's been a while since I wrote anything about nutrition and health, I thought it would be a good time to clear some confusion surrounding this topic.

Coincidentally, I'm also reading Gary Taubes's Good Calories, Bad Calories and just finished a section about cholesterol. If you've read my earlier posts about nutrition and weight loss but doubt the science behind them, I really recommend getting a copy of this book. It's rather heavy to read, but gives a thorough overview about the science and research in the field of nutrition over the past 100 years. Things are not as black and white as we've been led to believe.

Most people think that cholesterol is the stuff that clogs arteries, causing heart attacks and stroke. Due to this it's also commonly believed that avoiding cholesterol rich foods such as eggs will keep you healthier. However, the truth is far more complex than that.

First of all, cholesterol is absolutely vital for life. Cholesterol molecules are the building blocks of cell membranes. Without cholesterol our cells would not be able to maintain their form. The cells in our bodies are continuously dying and born again in a cycle of life, but if we would somehow remove cholesterol the cycle would end, and so would our own existence.

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The past two months have been hectic to say the least. I've been doing more courses in the university than during the fall, and I also started a new work project which actually turned out to take quite a lot of my time and energy. I'm doing things that are entirely new to me such as detailed project planning and resourcing. Factor in a new relationship and the end result has been an almost complete neglect to my own personal growth, which resulted in a slight depression.

Pohang, South Korea

During these couple of months I've learned something new, though. This is probably the first time ever when I have had so many promising opportunities that I simply can't get involved in all of them. I had to start prioritizing and actually refuse from things which is definitely something that doesn't come naturally to me.

Because of the standstill in my personal growth I have felt that I'm not moving forward, that I'm not evolving, and as a result I felt like I had betrayed myself and wasn't living up to my own standards. I also learned that this blog and my personal growth are very much intertwined. Without new profound realizations and discoveries in my own life it feels like I don't have enough interesting things to write about.

It's great to be able to plow through obstructions and get the job done. And it's good to keep yourself disciplined and on purpose. But if you forget your larger purpose while pursuing the small and endless tasks of daily life, then you have reduced yourself to a machine of picayune... Tasks are important, but no amount of duties adds up to love, freedom, or full consciousness. You cannot do enough, nor can you do the right things, so that you will finally feel complete.

- David Deida: The Way of the Superior Man

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Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

- Matthew 6:34

I am not a religious person. In fact I've been jokingly telling my friends that if I had a religion it would have to be Dudeism, and even that only so I would be able to marry couples. I think that would be cool.

Luckily you don't have to be religious to find wisdom in religious texts, and I think the quote above is a very important one to keep in mind. I am a worrier by nature. If I have many things that need to be done, they start to accumulate in my head and I find it more and more difficult to focus on actually doing them. I become stressful and I feel like I'm not getting anything done, even though in reality I am probably working harder than ever to meet my obligations.

I am good at dealing with stress. Or so it used to say in my CV. I actually thought it was true, but my current situation of working most of the week, dealing with university courses, and trying to keep my other commitments such as writing this blog have proved otherwise. I suck at dealing with stress. Having one or two big things to do is perfectly fine, but when the small ones start to accumulate on top of those, I am in trouble. I find it genuinely difficult to put them in order and deal with them without letting them gain power over me.

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World of Warcraft (WoW) came out in Europe in February 2005. I started playing it a month earlier during the final beta test phase, and I kept playing it for about four years straight - except when I was doing my student exchange in Malaysia in 2006. However, even at that time I was eagerly looking forward to the first big expansion (The Burning Crusade) to come out, and I was following WoW news sites and watching WoW videos created by other gamers.

All in all, I was rather hardcore about the whole thing: I was the founder and leader of one of the best guilds - a group of players organized to work together - on the server in which I played. Eventually we merged with another guild so we could achieve more together, and we did. We became the first ones on the whole server to beat most of the toughest opponents in the game. I also wanted to give up my position as a leader because it got simply too tiring to run the whole thing and to deal with egomaniacs, who for some reason seem to be particularly attracted to multiplayer online games...

Picture by Shards Of Blue

What finally stopped me playing WoW for good is actually rather embarrassing. In the end of 2008 I was becoming more and more fed up with the game. I had graduated a year and a half earlier and was working full-time. What I didn't want was to come home after work and play a game that started to feel like work, too. I felt obliged to play it. Then I finally realized after a period of denial that I was not getting any enjoyment out of it anymore, but instead it was making me anxious and frustrated.

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Note: My aim is to publish new articles at least once a week, which I've been able to do pretty well for the past 3-4 months, but last week was simply way too busy as I had to focus on work, school assignments, exams, and a few other commitments. I should be back on track now.

I think the topic of liming beliefs falls into "personal development basics," so to speak, but it is something that's useful to think about every now and then. It's also a topic I have never written about before, so hopefully it will be of interest to you :)

Now, what exactly is a limiting belief? Let's start with some examples:

• I love photography but I'm never going to be good enough to make it for living.
• It's always someone rich and famous who gets the kind of girl/guy I want.
• I was bullied as a kid which made me an introvert, and because of that I can never become successful in relationships.
• I am not smart enough to do well in business.
• I would love to write a book, but I don't have the talent/patience/creativity.
• My kids don't respect me because I don't have a well-paying job.
• Women/men don't like me because I'm fat.
• I'm overweight because of my genes, so I can never become fit.

As I've written before, our interpretation of the world and what happens around us is largely based on our beliefs. These beliefs can be roughly divided into two groups; positive and negative, or enabling and limiting. It's the negative, limiting beliefs that prevent us from achieving what we want in life, whereas the positive, enabling beliefs support us when we're reaching for our goals. 

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