Pearl One
A well-built why changes everything,
Say for example you’re planning your own upcoming spring wedding. You’ve never been able to lose weight before, but this time would be different. You tell yourself that you will lose weight come hell or high water. The big day arrives and you slip into your dress twenty pounds lighter. What happened? Over the last year, nothing could get past your why.
With the bride in mind: if we don’t find ways to strengthen our why every week (I do every day) it loses its power to light a fire underneath us.
It’s our work to figure out how to jump-start our why and I think I’ve hit on a few ideas. I’m reminded of the time that I wanted to establish a three-times a week yoga habit. I drove to class thinking, it’s for the boys, it’s for the boys, it’s for the boys.
My initial plan had been exactly that: to remind myself why I was leaving my cozy comes-with-a-cat couch and driving to a yoga class in the late afternoons. In the beginning my kids were my reason for making it to a yoga, but eventually I came to love yoga because I liked feeling stronger. Then it was because I wanted to feel good in my bathing suit that summer.
As time went by, I was jamming to yoga three times a week to do yoga with my yoga-friends. You can see that within a few months, my why built on itself and became stronger in the process.
Turns out our “baby whys” need attention too.
So every morning I write at least two sentences about why I’m trekking the Matterhorn and why it matters so much to me. I’m always looking to get some of that “bride-like” magic for myself.
Let’s pretend that your grand kids are your why you want to lose forty pounds. You want to be lean and active for the fun years ahead. So these are my suggestions to strengthen your why.
- Keep photos of your grand kids front and center, not just in the living room. Keep their cute faces in the kitchen where she’d see them every day. She can amp why even further by bringing in more photos in the kitchen often. Go a little nuts and tape their picture everywhere: on your steering wheel, on your wallet that lives in your purse; be silly and tape photos everywhere. We’re visual creatures, use it to pump you up.
- Use smart-self talk and tell yourself that these photos represent why you’re putting in such effort to trek the Smart Eating Path up the Matterhorn. When the going gets tough, these pictures will take you back to your why
- Go “Oprah” on your why and create an online or IRL vision board about your why and keep it where you can see it every day.
- Write in your journal every day about your why. If you can’t do daily, I’d aim for five times a week. And you don’t need to write ten paragraphs about your why. You might want to write something short and simple like “the kids are coming in June and I’m so excited!”
- As you’re imagining your why, what do you see? What do you hear? Smell? Feel? Think? Consciously go deep into this imagery every day and/or think about this picture just as you’re falling to sleep at night.
It’s the last one that’s really transformed my why.
Realign with your why daily and watch the imagery spring to life. ♥
Pearl Two
Those Teeny-Tiny Cinnamon Roll Moments. It happens. We’re chugging along embedding smart eating habits and all is well until one day somebody leaves a plate of cinnamon rolls – still warm from the oven — on our kitchen counter.
Now what?
I call them “cinnamon roll-moments”: it’s those teeny-tiny moments in everyone’s day when we usually “cave” as in:
- “the meeting was so boring I ended up eating two donuts.”
- “I was at lunch with friends and it would have been awkward to order brown rice and streamed veggies.”
- “my toddler-granddaughter offered me a slice of birthday cake, of course I couldn’t reject her offer.”
These moments are called little because in the scheme of life, they sound tiny and unimportant but it’s really our cavewoman in deep disguise acting small and innocent. She’s not. Don’t be tricked. I mean, she’ll say that it’s “just one package” of crackers or it’s “just one Mexican dinner. These cinnamon roll-moments strike two or three times during a typical day. Attempting to see them in advance will only make you stronger,
The problem for everyone is that two glazed donuts can devolve into weeks of overeating and feeling badly about our-self. That’s where the danger is, these small moments that are a part of everyone’s day hve to be outed for who is really pushing donuts at you. Her name start with a “c.”
When you’re offered food-porn and you know that it doesn’t fit into your lifestyle anymore, it is actually a sign that you don’t need food-porn, you actually need food-food. (Eighteen years in and I have to remind myself of this every single day). ♥
Pearl Three
Sequencing is taken directly from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). The purpose of sequences is to help us move from reacting to circumstances to responding. I encourage you to do a sequence a day in your journal. Powerful stuff.
I based this sequence on a friend.
Sequencing
- Situation: I have MS and MS is a disability.
- Thought: I’m so sick and tires of having MS and needing help. I don’t need 24/7 care, but I could use ten hours a week of someone coming over.
- Feeling: So, so sad and mad. Hoping the MS wouldn’t progress, but it has.
- Action: I continue to feel rotten. And don’t look for a caregiver.
- Result: Everything is still crummy and I don’t have someone to help me.
A bridge thought goes here.
Chosen Sequence
- Situation: I have MS and MS is a disability.
- Chosen Thought: There’s so much I want to do in life and if an assistant helps me then come on over!
- Feeling: Empowered, a little giddy.
- Action: I start calling the caregiver people so that I can begin interviewing. I’ll find the right one.
- Result: My assistant drove me to the airport and I took it from there. Soon I’ll be sipping champagne and waving from my cruise ship! ♥
Pearl Four
Books love us and want us to be happy
“Reading was my first addiction” is the opening line in this book and I was hooked. I’m only a third of the way through this memoir The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin, but I’m loving it. Total book dessert. ♥
Pearl Five
Ninety percent of success is ignoring the voice in your head that tells you to stop.” ♥
Have a smart- eating week!
♥, Wendy
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