Welcome to July’s Slim Down

Here you’ll get nuggets from the forum, snippets and ideas from fellow No Diet Dieters, a sprinkling of science and anything else we think might raise a smile and inspire you to keep things fresh…
 
This month, it’s ways to shake up your summer reading and even how to make your own sunshine! Yes, you can live in a place where it’s always sunny . No, we don’t mean Marbella, we mean in a more optimistic mind-set of a place!
 

Same Substance, Different Jacket

Have you seen the No Diet Diet second edition? We had a makeover and came out revised and updated in the UK in June.  To date we’ve been in the Amazon Top 20 and we’re now being read in 20 different languages. That’s a lot of people all over the world doing things differently.

Swapping our jacket got us thinking about how people choose books. How much judging of a book do you do by its cover, for instance? What might happen if you randomised your reading? (And if you’re someone who ‘doesn’t do reading’ isn’t that a DSD waiting to happen…?).

 

Summer Reading Shuffled

Because we’re into change, and it’s said that books can change lives, we had a three-minute mind-splurge in the NDD office about how people make book selections. How about weaving #17 or #19 into your holiday reading this summer? Here are ways of boosting your chances of hitting on that life-changing read this summer:

1. A cover that catches your eye in a bookshop
2. Just browsing until you find something
3. Friend’s recommendation
4. Professional review in a newspaper
5. Amateur review on Amazon
6. Seeing it at friend’s house and thinking it might be interesting for me
7. Come across the author in another way (TV, radio, seminar, magazine) and follow them up
8. Specific search on a subject
9. A gift
10. Offer in the newspaper
11. Bestseller
12. Word of mouth
13. Set text at school or university
14. Join a book group
15. Choose the first 5-star book you see on Amazon
16. Random number and turn it into an ISBN
17. “The book I wish I’d written” comment in author interviews
18. Ask your library for the least/most borrowed book in 2006
19. Wait at the library counter and take the first returned book
20. In a library or bookshop wait for someone to drop a book and check it out.

Friend of the NDD Team, Nick Chivers, had a go at #15 and the book he came across was ‘Mudlark’ by John Sedden. Asking Nick about it: “Well it paid off because I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read the reviews and everyone gave it five stars. It’s not something that would have come to my attention otherwise. I’ve imbibed some new knowledge as a result”

But why bother reading something random anyway? Does there need to be a reason? It’s something different and may take you somewhere that your normal route never would have in a million years!

 

The Eternal Sunshine of the No Diet Diet Mind

Despite the soggy start, summer is well and truly with us now. But how sunny will yours be? If your thoughts were a weather forecast what would the outlook be? Would there always be clouds on the horizon or eternal sunshine?


Why not try to summer-ise your thinking this summer. Anyone can learn to be optimistic – and Doing Something Different is the key. It’s just a case of breaking your overcast thinking habits.

Here are some tips from the field of positive psychology for sunny thinking:

• When things go wrong, don’t catastrophise. Tell yourself it was a one-off and put it behind you.
• Take the credit when things go well. Notice the positive aspects of yourself that made good things happen
• Count your blessings regularly. ‘Gratitude therapy’ is a powerful spirit-lifter - make time to tot up all the things, however small, that are going well in your life.
• Seek out sunny people. Surround yourself with positive, uplifting people and ditch those who dampen.
• Bring sunshine into someone else’s life. Brightening the life of another can give you a warm glow too.
• Put effort into being positive. Things turn out well for optimists because they believe they will – and so they work at it.

Glass half full? We can’t remember who said that not only is their glass half full, but it’s a lovely glass and someone will probably be along to fill it up in a minute….but we love their optimism!


Change your weather for something sunnier this July,
The nodietdietway Team

nodietdietway.com