I noticed an old thinking patterns of mine the other day. When “X” happens, I’ll do “Y”.
Just insert whatever fits into the formula for yourself. “When my job stress is gone, I’ll take a vacation”. “When I can relax, I’ll stop drinking”. “When I leave my marriage, I can lose weight”, or my personal favorite: “When I’m in recovery, life will be easy”.
We make promises of health for our future, waiting for the perfect time to increase healthy habits. When we don’t follow through, we punish ourselves, make excuses, say we’re in “denial”, or “afraid of success”.
These are lies we tell ourselves, to avoid what our body craves today. Health, happiness, rest, clean water, food and air.
The excuses, denials, promises, and delays are not the ultimate lie we tell ourselves.
The ultimate lie is: believing the stress will end, or people, places and things around us will change, and stop bothering us.
The truth is: Life Will Never Settle Down, nor be Perfect. We will never be perfectly happy, perfectly healthy, or without emotions and difficulties. Life will continue the ups and downs, regardless of our skill, our weight, or the amount of money we have in the bank.
We have a false idea, that our behavior causes things to happen around us. Someone bemoaned to me recently: “why do these things always happen to me?”
Well, actually,……these things happen to all of us. Everyone experiences death and grief, many people have a water main break-flooding the home, trouble paying the bills, or a conflict with their partner or boss. We have created a complicated life in this country. So it’s not about you. You didn’t cause these things to happen, yet you must deal with them anyway.
Our work is to realize and trust, that we can handle the ups and downs of life, and move towards healthy habits now. One day at a time, one step at a time. Drop the idea that things will be perfect, or that you can make immediate change. Allow change to happen over time, connect with people who will support you in that change, and ask for help. You don’t need to “go it alone”. You got this!