This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 1730, the value of fasting from anything,

and how to get started by Joshua Becker of becoming Minimalist.com,

and a moderator just to mallic reading you blogs every single day of the year.

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The value of fasting from anything and how to get started by Joshua Becker of becoming Minimalist.com.

In my mind growing up the idea of fasting was always tied to food.

My Catholic friends would fast during a lent the 40 days leading up to Easter

by not eating meat on Fridays. While my family never observed a lent in the traditional sense,

I was still encouraged to consider fasting from food as a spiritual discipline by

abstaining from eating for 24 hours as it means to focus more attentively on God.

In many ways my views on fasting have not changed. I still see spiritual value in removing food

for a period of 24 hours. The practice does indeed heighten awareness of spiritual matters.

And nothing I write beyond this point is meant to take away from that practice or the spiritual

benefits of it. I only mean to add to it. You see, as I've matured in my life and my spirituality,

I've begun to recognize additional value in the discipline of fasting.

Moving beyond abstaining from food, I've also learned to appreciate the benefits of fasting

from almost anything in moderation. Fasting, it seems to me, is ultimately about self-control.

It is about the intentional removal of one external controlling factor in our lives for a period of time.

It is an exercise in self-control. It self-control holds benefit for all, regardless of our faith or

non-faith preferences. In college for the first time, I set out to give up one controlling factor in

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