Millions of people around the world are mourning the death of Steve Jobs, the entrepreneur whose ability to think outside the box pioneered a radical revolution in personal computing.  Jobs’ company, Apple Inc., grew to iconic levels by inventing such devices as the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

All of Apple’s groundbreaking inventions gave us new ways to connect, learn, grow and relate.

 

 

A number of his quotes have been circulating.  I like this one:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by
dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise
of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the
courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you
truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

This sentence, in particular, stands out:

Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

I lived by other people’s thinking for about 20 years, trying diet after diet, completely unaware I was slowly destroying my body’s ability to respond to adequate fuel and produce energy, and thoroughly confused why it never worked.  I wanted permanent weight loss but all I found through diet dogma was temporary weight loss and mounting failure.

Other people’s thinking was a set-up — a set-up for failure, regain, blame and shame, and, ultimately, reduced self-confidence.

Now, there’s a lot of noise in the diet world.  Empty noise.  But I didn’t know that.  I didn’t realize when the “experts” claimed success, it meant success for 5 minutes.  I wanted real change.

The noise wasn’t the problem.  The lies weren’t the problem.

TRUST was the problem.   I didn’t trust myself.  I didn’t trust messages like hunger, satiation and fatigue.  I didn’t trust myself to figure out how to run my own body.

I gave more weight (pun intended) to other people’s thinking than my own.

But, just like Steve Jobs said, our hearts already know what we want to become.  We have all the answers inside of us.  Our bodies are amazing reservoirs holding valuable information, feedback, as well as the powerful ability to grow, restore, reconnect and heal.

My healthy weight would never have occurred by following diet dogma.  By finally discarding other people’s thinking, I was able to find the truth and healing for myself and my body.