“There are no limits - Only in your imagination!”

The quote above is probably one of my favorite quotes. I once saw it printed on a t-shirt of a member of my water-polo club. That quote really hit me, because it is so true. When you limit yourself in your mind, you will never be able to achieve your goals. I think almost every body has limiting thoughts; I can’t do it, I can’t afford it, I’ll never lose the weight, that will never happen, etc. But the truth is that you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it.

Yesterday I read the perfect example of mind over matter in the newspaper. Would you consider having surgery without anaesthetics? I know that I would not even have to think about that one; there’s just no way! But 61 year old Alex Lenkei from Worthing England did it. He is a hypnotist by profession and he proofed that hypnotists are not a bunch of crooks. He hypnotised himself to undergo an 83-minute surgery on his hand. You can watch a video about it here. According to Mr. Lenkei he was aware of what was going on, but he did not feel any pain.

I think it is amazing. It just goes to show that our mind is the most powerful tool we have!

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Who knew that doing some minor shopping on a Saturday morning could make you so cranky? I had to do some groceries and have a look at a usb flash drive so I decided to go as early as possible to avoid the big masses at the shopping mall. Just to get to the shopping mall which is only a 5 minute drive I had to stop at 5 traffic lights so the drive took me much longer than it usually does.

Then at the Supermarket it wasn’t too busy, but when I got at the check out there was only one of the nineteen check outs open. And ofcourse it had a long line with lots of full shopping trolleys. And then, when it was finally my turn, they decide to open up five other check outs.

When I was finally ready to drive away, this dumb ass decided to turn into a one way section in the parking lot. It’s not like there aren’t any signs there. So no one could get out of the parking lot. And if that is not bad enough some other dumb ass decides to swerve into a parking space right in front of me which forced me to slam on my brakes to avoid crashing into him.

I do not want to be known as the chick who beat up an old fart in the parking lot of the mall. So I took a deep breath and counted to hundred. When I was finally on my way again, the traffic lights were again NOT in my favour and made the trip very annoying.

And the worst thing is that the council are working on putting even more traffic lights in. What are those idiots thinking? Traffic lights every 100 meters is not a smart thing to do. It does not work because when it gets busy in rush hour the whole traffic backs up and you get major traffic jams. And not to mention that it annoys the crap out of everyone.

I am just glad that I am home now drinking a cup of hot tea…

So I was just checking my emails and one was regarding the domain name of one of my sites. Turns out that one word in that domain is trademarked. Honestly, this came as a big surprise as it is simply the name of the sport I write about. Who knew that was trademarked? I certainly didn’t. And I am sure lots of other webmasters don’t know it either because there are dozens (if not hundreds) of sites that use that word in their domain name.

Anyway, since it is trademarked I am not allowed to use it and I am basically forced to shut it down. So I just made a back up of the site and removed it completely. It feels like a big blow. The site was my pride and joy. It has already been up in the air for over a year and the domain name doesn’t expire until 2010. It has been running really well over the last couple of months and the traffic and the number of subscribers were growing steadily.

I feels like I’ve had a big blow in my stomach. I am literally feeling sick from disappointment. I have never intentionally wanted to violate any copyrights. Anyway, I really feel like I need to blow off some steam. Since the gym is closed I’m gonna have to jump on my home gym equipment to release some negative energy.

I remember as a kid and teenager that I was watching the six o’clock news religiously. I always wanted to stay up to date and know everything that went on in the world.  I can’t say that the news made me feel good; there was so much bad stuff going on in the world. It made me feel helpless… Helpless because I did not know how to help these people other than donating my pocket money to charity and writing letters for Amnesty International.

One night they showed on the news how Pakistanis were beating up Israeli’s with rocks. I saw how they beat the life out of them. I could literally feel the pain those tortured people must have felt. It made me sick to my stomach, it made me cry and I was getting bad nightmares about it. I don’t know why this particular news item got to me so badly. Maybe it was for the first time I truly realized that some things in the world were not only not fair, but some people were downright cruel. For the first time in years I did not want to watch the news any more.

I still have a love-hate relationship with the news on TV. I am curious and I do want to be aware of what is going on, but I hate being confronted with only bad news. Why can’t they have a little ‘Good news” section? Why are we only shown the bad things that are going on in the world? Yes, I realize that awareness is important, but how about focusing a bit more on how you can help or on the good or inspirational things in the world?

So lately I am getting my news updates mainly from an online newspaper. Why? Because I can just skim through the headlines and choose what I want to read. I don’t want to read articles about how many more soldiers died in a war, I don’t want to read about another case of massive mesothelioma victims, I don’t want to read about how a father killed his whole family and then committed suicide, etc. I want to read about how the Dutch swim team got a new world record, I want to read about all the blunders Clinton & Obama are making, I want to read about things that put a smile on my face or that inspire me.

I do not want to hear or read about things that make me feel sick and helpless because I can’t change a thing about the situation. Does that make me ignorant? It probably does, but you know what? I donate as much money as I can to charities even though I can’t really miss the money. And I sign petitions to make a statement. But watching the news? No thank you!

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to lose the six kilo’s that I had gained in the last six months. I am very proud to say that I managed to lose those six kilo’s. To be honest I have lost another kilo, but the bad news is that the weight loss journey doesn’t end there. There are still many more kilo’s to go. But I am setting myself small goals. Losing those six kilo’s that I had gained recently was my first goal. The next goal is to lose another five.

Losing weight can be hard; you need to get your diet right, you need to exercise, etc. I see it more as a lifestyle change. I know why I have gained the weight; always too busy with taking care of other people and not having any time for myself to exercise. And no… I did not always eat right. According to the dietitian I was actually not eating enough and that’s why my metabolism had slowed down considerably.

So at the moment I am eating 5 or 6 meals a day and I try to exercise each day. I enjoy my new lifestyle, but sometimes I wish the weight came off much quicker. Aren’t we all a little bit impatient when it comes to that?  Sometimes I wonder if taking pills lipovox would really help. I know many people fall for diet pills, but I think you are cheating yourself when you take them. Sure, maybe you lose the weight a bit faster. But if you don’t change your lifestyle the weight will just creep back on.

Have you ever tried diet pills?