If I reflect back on how I have been making my life changes, it's been a slow and steady (albeit zig-zaggy) process. I talked about one component, "Incrementality", last June.
But something else that strikes me is that I have made the best, most effective and lasting changes, NOT by focusing on the BAD choices I have made, or was then making, but by focusing on how to ADD a GOOD thing. (How's that for a run-on sentence?)
Let me explain.
Before I started this journey, I was eating fast food all the time. It was quick, easy, sent me into a numbing coma-like state and kept me from feeling. Instead of reprimanding myself for those bad choices, or focusing on how I had to eliminate the "bad" from my day (i.e., don't go to McDonalds), I focused on how I could add a "good" into the mix.
So I made a rule. I can go to McDonalds like always, and I didn't have to eliminate ANYTHING from what I would normally have. I did, however, have to add in ONE good, healthier choice to the meal. If what I wanted was a Big Mac and Fries and (yeah, diet soda...what can I say?), I could still have that. In addition, I would have to add a salad. I decided that I was going to have one fruit or vegetable (vegetables were preferred over fruit for the nutrition but if they didn't have veggies, I'd have fruit.) And I had to eat the healthier item first.
It didn't take long before I realized the healthier choices were filling me up and it was definitely making me feel better physically. In a short time, I would order the Big Mac and the salad and forego the fries. Not because I was supposed to get rid of the bad, but because adding in the good kind of nudged out the bad all by itself.
I decided to add water. Water is essential to good health, good skin, etc. So I decided to get in 8 glasses of water each day. In doing so, I automatically found myself cutting down on diet sodas and coffee! So I didn't focus at ALL on "diet soda and artificial sweeteners are "bad") but rather tried to fill more of my day with beneficial things.
Once those things were in place, they automatically pushed out so many of the choices that got me in trouble in the first place!
I think by focusing on the "bad" or the "negative" it reinforces our predisposition toward low self worth and self punishment. I think, for me, the best things in life are accomplished with "good", positive messages, positive reinforcement, positive changes and reinforcing my worth and value. And, as old Martha says.....that's a GOOD thing.
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Excellent!
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