Loving Where I’m At 👍

I am liking Atomic Habits by James Clear. It resonates with me. I’ve already highlighted half the book.

I’ve been frustrated, because nothing I’ve tried has worked. But could it be I haven’t stuck with any one thing long enough to form a habit?

In Atomic Habits, Clear talks about 1% improvements. It’s about how tiny changes for the better compound over time, like interest.

To illustrate his point, he discusses Dave Brailsford, the performance manager of the British Cycling team who led the team to victory over a ten-year span.

Brailsford made minute changes, like heated over shorts, different bike seats, alcohol on the tires, biofeedback sensors, and so on, and all of these tiny adjustments, kept in place over time, made a notoriously mediocre team wildly successful.

I think I’ve kind of begun down that path with some of the little changes I’ve made recently or not so recently:

• My staying away from Dunkin’ streak
• Deleting DoorDash
• Lockbox
• Strategic placement of trigger foods
• Dinners list
• Tracking even bad days
• Choosing to remain in the WH post-op
• Pre-tracking/ pre-planning
• Caffeine management

He says you must give yourself permission to fall in love with the system; not wait for achieving the goal to find happiness. I agree with this 100%.

It’s like writing. I’m totally in love with the process of it. Doing it makes me happy. The end product is actually not as important to me.

Would I love to have written a book? Get published? Sure! Who wouldn’t? But I’m also totally cool just writing my brains out everyday for the sheer joy of it.

Similar to writing, I have to love the person I am as well as admiring the person I hope to become.

Put another way, I need to love where I’m at; not grieve it. Appreciate who I am in the here and now. That’s where that whole self-compassion concept comes in, too.

Am I doing that?

Not really. I pretty hardcore beat myself up when the scale is up a notch. Instead of celebrating all of these positive changes I’ve initiated, I berate myself for not staying closer to my daily points budget.

My self love (not like that, you perverts) and acceptance is very conditional on that stupid metal monster (or, in my case, glass bitch).

I guess my point, if there is one, is that I cannot count on my elusive future goal to make me happy. That’s putting the cart before the horse. I need to fall in love with my systems for creating my best me. Love the process. The journey!

I’ve been on other journeys before and lost lots of weight, even reached goal. But did I really learn?

I think it’s time to do this with my mind and my heart open.