Self Discovery is Learning
Nothing exists until it is discovered by you, there are no shortcuts.
The hand and the mind work together in the process of discovering the world, 
but this occurs in a social world, so what we think, what it might be possible to think, is also socially moderated.
Everybody has this experience, but few people examine the world or themselves intensely enough to break new ground.
Most people never understand that they need to come to problems with their own data. Your own data you can TRUST, so when you use it, the risks for you are small. People without their own data are forced; to rely on hunches, and on what other people are saying, or on the results of a Google search.
I believe (without any documented evidence), that most people squander the knowledge that a life created, they didn't record it, no written record, few photos, no measurements. If your life happened and there is no record, how do you know what you "remember" was really what you recall? Most people record little, and real knowledge from your own lived experience is wasted. You need to examine yourself, what the world is really like, and how to learn from the events about you.
Taking the Trouble to Record Your Own Data
The production of Value
Value exists in a few critical ideas integrated into your life in a useful way. Value may most easily be found by correctly applying a pre-existing model, plan or idea like the Banting Diet. The task of making your diet really personal lies with you.
The most likely situation is to reach a plateau which is as far as you can go with today's knowledge. We all need to be constantly working on numerous improvement cycles or innovative projects.
The blockage of your progress, a reversal, a failure may give you the keys that unlock whatever health problems you may have been working on.
How do you inform yourself?
Your task is to inform yourself about things you would otherwise forget.
Your journal allows you to save the pieces of your life so it's possible to resolve your life puzzle.
Be an Accountant
Learn how to count and measure, and write down the result. Provide the data that you can come back to in a year or two, and check again for changes.
Keeping a Journal
If you rely upon your memory to collect your data, much of your knowledge will be lost. I recommend keeping a journal. For a Health Journal an A5 diary one page a day seems to be ideal.
I usually recommend an ordinary hard covered exercise book. Transportable, easy to use and low cost. However, the built in, time structure, of the daily diary is useful for a health journal.
Many people are today keeping computer journals because it's easy to have the pages indexed so you maintain access to your material. There are alternatives to journal writing.
30 Years of handwritten records
The Consequences of Error
Take down the structures in your life that prevent you from asking new question or better questions. What you "know" is always the greatest barrier to learning.
How do you prepare yourself for the possibility of being wrong?
There are always clues, sometimes very obvious clues, that you might be holding the wrong end of a stick, or believing something that's not valid. For instance you seem to be stuck, in a circular process that promises success but never delivers. Or you have a critical failure. Or there is an emergency or crisis that forces you to stop. Try to learn the lesson for that. Be open to the idea that you may have helped to create that situation.
Resolving Health Problems
The integration of all the ideas needed to understand a difficult personal health issue takes time. You can't "make it happen" just because you need a result today. Integration is the result of living with a set of ideas in your memory, and your experience, until they modify themselves, and make sense of each other.
Knowing you've got a health problem does not automatically provide a solution. Nor is it possible to "buy solutions" to problems that involve your values, how you see yourself, or how you think. Doctors know a lot about health and medicines, but they don't know you, as you should know yourself.
The production of Value
You can't contract out your ability to think. Working on problems that interest you, collecting your own data, conducting real trials, or debates, or thought experiments, are essential tasks in developing your own thinking.
Your defense against the stupidity of others, your defense against bad professional advice, your defense against misinformation, that is the common currency of the news media, is your own data. Without your own data, you are likely to behave like a leaf in the wind. With your own data, you become like a tree firmly rooted, and able to stand against the wind.
Work with Other People
Regular meeting with a "mastermind group" is another way to examine what you are doing and to benefit from the ideas of other people. Join groups interested in the exploring the same areas. Nobody can do this work for you. Your ability to think is entirely in your own hands, either you develop it, or you don't. You will live with the choice you make.
Please accept this invitation to join the Banting Lifestyle Forum on Facebook, so you can continue your own health journey. This is a free public discussion group. Where you can ask questions and get help from group members or the moderators. Please use this link.
