Cleopatra_Nik

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about failure.

 

First off, I should say I’m not 100% clear on the concept. I, as many post-op WLS patients do, worry a lot about failure. The statistics are there and for those who collect those statistics failure means something very clear—weight regain. But is that really failure? There are so many parameters to consider. Failure can be not losing enough weight in the first place. Failure can be eating the wrong foods, not exercising enough, not taking your vitamins or a host of other things.

 

No matter what it is or is not, failure is the “boogey man” of the post-operative experience. It haunts our thoughts in quiet moments. It makes us look upon great successes with suspicion and mistrust. It is, in my estimation, “the debbil.”

 

It’s so cunning too. It gets us right at that place where our insecurities intersect with our inability to predict the future. It is seductive—coaxing us into playing ourselves directly into its clutches. We are afraid to fail so we eat comfort food. We sit, sedentarily, on our couches for hours contemplating it. Instead of going for a walk to sort out our emotions. Instead of seeking out a support group or a friend. Instead of asking for help to prevent bad food choices. And, by doing so, we more closer to failure (whatever that is).

 

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and here’s what I’ve come up with.

 

Failure to a lot of people is a noun. It’s what you will be if you don’t achieve a certain size or number on a scale. It’s what you consider yourselves to have been before your surgery and, if you come to resemble your pre-op self in any way, it is what you will be for the remainder of your life.

 

I don’t want to define failure that way anymore. Failure is a verb. It’s active. It is something that I practice on occasion. Something in which I participate. Something that I have control over. Something over which I  have power. Not the vice versa.

To me (and your mileage may vary here) failure is not about the scale. It’s not about clothing sizes. It’s not even about my food choices. It’s about the process. It’s about committing to the whole process—the good, the bad, the ugly. It’s about staring down those parts of myself that I dislike. It’s about challenging the behaviors that bring me down (and those behaviors, in my humble opinion, have to manifest themselves every once in a while in order for us to actively acknowledge them).

 

In short, to me, the day I fail is the day that I wake up and don’t want to try anymore. Because life goes on. It marches forward whether we want it to or not. And the easy thing to do is to say “I give up! I’ll never be happy/fit/accepting of myself” and go seek out a package of Oreo cookies. To me, it’s a much harder thing to say, “I screwed up. I acknowledge that. I hate it…but I acknowledge it. And today I’m going to try to do better.”

 

So my friends this week I challenge you to face down the boogey man. What behaviors (using the definition of failure as a verb, not a noun) constitute failure to you? Do you currently practice those behaviors unwittingly?

 

Then I challenge you to make a plan! Plans need not be elaborate or complicated. If a behavior of failure to you is to plant yourself on the couch and watch television monotonously, for example, your plan could be to instead go for a walk. Or call a friend. Or knit a scarf. Or something else of your choosing. But practice success, not failure.

 

Have a great week.

I hear the WLS journey described in many ways, but most often I hear it referred to as a “journey.” My friend Pam entitled her blog “Journey to a Healthier Me” and others have talked about stumbling blocks on their journey. On the overall, I like the analogy but I wonder if many of us actually think of this process as a journey.

 

Let’s think for a moment about what a journey is. The idea is well reflected in some of the great literature of all time in the form of an epic. The structure of an epic is fairly simple—you have the “hero,” the protagonist, who sets out to do something. But of course the story does not end there (or else it’d be really, really boring). No…our protagonist faces challenges that take him/her off the path of their journey. To get back onto the path, they must learn how to overcome the challenges thrown his or her way. Often in dealing with these challenges, the protagonist gains some wisdom and learns some important life lessons.

 

Is that what we do? One might think the answer is yes. And that would be pretty accurate considering the fact that many of the obstacles we face we have to overcome in order to live…healthfully, un-healthfully, or otherwise. But in our thinking…in our heads…do we approach this thing as a journey…or do we approach this as a race?

 

I read every single post on the RNY board. And especially in the fears and concerns of new post-ops I see myself very clearly—new to the post-WLS lifestyle, not sure what to expect, anxious to see results, and wanting more than anything for it to work this time. When approaching my process in that respect I was thinking of my life as a race and not a journey. And I got frustrated when those challenges came my way. And I thought I’d failed a million times, gave up on myself a million times, said to myself “perhaps I am the one person in the world for whom this surgery will not work…”

 

Even now, when I can see the physical markers of my success (and, yes, my head is catching up…I don’t look at myself and see an obese person anymore. Chubby? Perhaps. Fat? No.) I still tend not to look at the overall picture. I see a clock ahead of me, ticking down, down, down so fast toward that 2 year mark—the point at which, in my brain, the carriage turns into a pumpkin and the effects of having had surgery go “poof!” As ridiculous as that sounds, that thought is pervasive and very real to me. Therefore, it has power over me.

 

What would life look like if I thought of this as a journey instead? Well, perhaps I would realize that ultimately I am going to be who I am—physically, mentally, emotionally—and that who I am is only partially tied to how much I weigh and what I eat. I might also start to move to a place in my life where an impromptu family gathering is not accompanied by complex calculations in my head of grams of carbs and fat and protein. Perhaps if this were a journey I’d look at exercise as something that makes my body feel good (because it does), gives me energy (does that too) and not necessarily as a means to an end of losing weight. Perhaps then I’d choose exercises based on what I like to do instead of what I think may burn the most calories.

 

Don’t get me wrong. In the beginning of this process you have to think strategically about things. It’s the only way to fulfill the requirements of your program. But I notice in myself that there are clear phases in the journey and that I’ve rebelled against all of them. There was the transition from being able to eat very little, to being able to eat more, to being able to eat substantially more. There was the transition from plus sized clothing to “regular” sizes. There was the transition from feeling the need to use my surgery as a caveat at meals and restaurants to being able to “pass” for normal. To be frank…these things freaked me the hell out! But these are steps in the journey. They are challenges. We must learn to adapt and learn from those challenges in order to move forward and continue on our path.

 

So this week I empower you to consider whether you think of this process as a journey or a race. If it is the latter, I empower you to consider what your thinking, your habits, your life would be like if you behaved as if this were a journey instead. Finally, I encourage you to arm yourself with knowledge about this process, so that when hunger comes back, when pouch capacity increases, when the intestines start to soak up more calories from your food, when weight starts to stabilize, you see these simply as new challenges in your journey and not signs of failure.

Have a great week.

One of my favorite passages in the bible is this, “for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” Matthew 16:26. It is both an admonishment and a caution. Like when we, as parents, say, “well if Billy jumped off a building, would you do it too?” It is a rhetorical question to be sure, but one meant to inspire thought and, quite frankly, lately I’ve been thinking about it.

 

In particular I think about gaining a new self vs. losing my old self. Now to be clear: there are some parts of my old self that needed to die so that my present self could live. The part of me that did not value myself enough to scrutinize my food intake. That part had to die. The part of me that didn’t find myself worth the labor of exercising. She most definitely had to die. But there are a million other parts of myself in between my old self and new that seem to have gotten lost in the churning sea of post-weight loss surgery enlightenment.

 

I noticed this most distinctly last week at the gym (where many a great contemplation has begun for me). It had been a long day for both me and my children. We awakened early, went to our respective day functions (them school, me work) and then rushed home to scarf down a meal before trekking to the gym where the children spent an hour trying not to fight with each other while I spent an hour fighting with the elliptical machine. And all I could think of was how I wished I were at home. How much I would have loved to be in my bed with my jammies on and a pair of slippers playing “I declare war” with the kids.

 

But weight loss is a battlefield. And I must be a soldier.

 

Such hard thinking on my part was necessary in the first part of my journey. Forming habits is hard work. It takes many, many days of repetitive behavior, strictness, and a swift hand for non-compliance. It had long been my opinion that any deviation from my diligently formed habits was a recipe for failure. But on the elliptical machine that day I began to think about why I started this journey.

It was for my girls. The mother they used to have wasn’t a particularly good one. She was depressed and moody. Sullen and withdrawn. She didn’t play with them, she didn’t take particularly good care of them. She taught them bad habits in caring for themselves. So that mother made the ultimate sacrifice—she gave herself up so that her children could be in better hands. And there we stood—at a cold, impersonal gym—not talking to one another, not imparting vital knowledge, not expressing our love for one another. I was on the elliptical, my oldest was listening to her MP3 player and my youngest was coloring. And I felt bad about that, but how could I slack off on my commitment to a better life?

 

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?

 

What did it profit me to gain my health, my body, a healthy weight, but lose my children in the process? I’m not saying I should not go to the gym. And I’m not saying time for oneself is bad. What I am saying is that it has to fit together within the big picture. For me the big picture is that I am a mom. And that if my desire to be anything—fit, a writer, a lover, a fighter, a dancer, whatever—encroaches too far into my role as a mother, I need to look at that.

 

So what does this mean to you? Well…sometimes we let our process get in the way of the big picture. How many of you have avoided a family function because there is trigger food there? How many of us have been driven out of our homes by food demons? How many of us avoid people, places and things we associate with our former obesity? And how many of those “sacrifices” are painful to you? How many of you wish that it didn’t have to be that way? How many of you long for some sort of compromise?

 

For us, the problem was easily resolved. We now have set days when mom goes to the gym and we have planned “vegging days” (which are not really planned at all). I respect both kinds of days equally. I don’t sacrifice my gym days for vegging days or vice versa. It is hard sometimes because life gets in the way—I have to work late and skip the gym, or a parent teacher conference gets in the way of a vegging day—and I feel like I want to rob Peter to pay Paul. I don’t. And life continues.

So this week I empower you to examine the answers to the above questions? For those who avoid functions because of food triggers, what would your family/loved ones do if you simply talked to them and told them about your anxiety? And what would happen if you explained to your family that you need help coping with your food demons? And what would happen if you showed up in old places with a new body? Think about it. I think that these road blocks are really opportunities to learn that the world isn’t quite so scary as we have it made out to be. And perhaps we can just live in it.

Have a great week.

Having been a member of my gym for over a year now I can see that there is an ebb and flow of gym attendance. It is highest in January and I can hardly get a spot on any machine and my weight circuit takes twice as long as usual, if not longer. I call this the “New Year’s Resolution” rush. By about May the ones who were just there because of their resolutions have tapered off, leaving us old faithfuls and the new crop of committed souls.

 

This year it took longer to weed out the resolution people though. This week I went to the gym and FINALLY it was peaceful again. This got me to thinking about resolutions. I am a big believer in them, but not of New Year’s resolutions. They are often fueled by a sense of time urgency. It is as if saying, “I have wasted the past year. I only have X years left on this earth so I must make a new start tomorrow!” Which isn’t an altogether bad message. But I am all about attainable goals fueled by potential success, not past failures. New Year’s resolutions tend to be lofty and based on negative self-perception.

 

Instead, I personally go for “micro-resolutions” of various sorts. Like I am currently thinking about my fall resolutions which, as of right now, only include one thing—learning to make something edible from pumpkin flesh. But see how simple that is? Not “lose the last 30 lbs.” Not “quit smoking” (although I don’t smoke so that one would be easy!). Not get a new job or start a romantic relationship (the former I have no desire to do, the latter…I would not be mad if it happened…). Just learn how to roast a pumpkin and make something out of it.

 

Imagine if all resolutions were that simple. But they can be! It just requires some adjustment. When we have weight loss surgery we are not sprinting a short race, we are running a marathon. This is truly the rest of our lives. And you may get to goal and stay there or you can get to goal and bounce back up (or sink below) and have to readjust. So in my little opinion those lofty goals for us especially can be pitfalls.

 

So this week be it resolved that I challenge you to set some short term or “mini” resolutions. Ultimately these resolutions should feed into your overall goals but they have to be something you can realistically accomplish in the timeframe you set. If it seems too challenging, it’s too big to be a mini-resolution—come down a few notches. If it seems trivial, you aren’t thinking big enough.

 

Then watch your accomplishments pile up! It’s amazing how much the “packaging” of goals affects your ability to achieve them. And achieving goals is infectious. Once you’ve achieved one, you start to achieve others, which motivates you to aim bigger and bigger until your large scale goals are on the horizon!

 

You can do it. I know you can. Now get to it!

My VP at work often says this. I work in communcations for a Christian organization and I am constantly being reminded that I am not the audience. I am not the person who reads our organization's materials. I don't have the same goals, hopes, dreams and motivations as they do. Not because I'm not a good Christian (although that is often up for debate), but because I am in it. I'm too close to my subject material. Quite simply, when you are too close to something it's hard to tell the forest from the trees.

I contemplated this in relation to my post operative experience. I would venture to guess at least 97% of us suffer from some form of body dysmorphic disorder--we cannot see the changes in ourselves. And even when we do note some change, somehow we always seem to think we are too big. We look in the mirror and see our old selves.

This causes us to do strange things like beg off compliments or qualify them with things like "thanks, but I still have X pounds to lose" or "thanks, now once I get this skin off I'll look great..."

This week's message is simple--you are not the audience. You're not. You're in it. You're too close. You can't see what others see. So what is my point? When you come to the point when the scale doesn't move anymore or when it slows to a snail's pace...before you even venture to think poorly about yourself, remember you are not the audience. To your audience you are a phenomenal success. To your audience you are half the person you were before physically. To your audience you eat like a bird and you are energetic and exuberant.

I won't challenge you to see yourself as your audince sees you. Even I am figuring that one out. I will, however, challenge you to think about your audience when you are in a self defeating mood.

I think my daughter summed this feeling up best when she ran to me the other day and hugged me tight and said "it's so nice to be able to wrap my arms around you mommy!"

It isn’t often that I pull out the old soap box but today I’m going to do it, mostly in reaction to many posts I’ve been seeing from newbies.

 

There is this pervasive perception that you should be able to do things the same way after surgery as you did before.

 

You used to be able to drink whole milk, now you have to drink yucky skim.

You used to be able to eat X, Y, Z and now you can’t

You used to drink Pepsi/smoke cigarettes/(fill in your former bad habit here)

 

Yes you used to be able to do that. But you know what else used to be?

 

You used to have high blood pressure

You used to be at risk for a massive heart attack

You used to be uncomfortable in your own body

You used to be inactive

You used to be ashamed

You used to (insert whatever catalyst brought YOU to weight loss surgery here)

 

It’s a trade-off. I think about what I try to instill in my children (the word try being operative here). You don’t always get what you want. Sometimes I feel bad telling them that but it’s the truth. You can’t always expect life to be what you want it to be. So what is the measure of a good life then? If the things you sacrifice are worth it for the things you get.

 

For me, I lost my ability to chug Pepsi every day but I gained massive amounts of energy.

I gave up buffalo wings but I gained a waist line

I do have to stick to an eating plan or strategy but guess what. I’ll probably live to see my grandchildren get married if I keep this behavior up.

 

So next time you think you have it so bad, that the requirements of this surgery are so hard, think about this—what are you getting in return? Have you made a good trade-off for yourself (and be honest here). If not, what would make it “worth it” to you? That should be your goal. Because once you’ve had this surgery you’ve had it. You cannot be the person you were before—physically or mentally. So your focus should be on getting to the place where you look at those things you gave up as things you left behind, or said goodbye to for now, and realize that those things really aren’t ever worth your life and well-being.

Have a great week everyone.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take a mini-vacation last weekend. It was my first time driving any significant distance. We arrived there fine and had a grand time and then, as with all vacations, the time came to head home.

 

Getting home again wasn’t so easy as going away and we got lost. It’s an interesting thing to travel in the first place but getting lost adds a whole new dimension to things. At first, you don’t realize you are lost. You are traveling down the road and you are oblivious to what later seems like obvious warning signs. Then comes the moment when you realize that something has gone wrong—you’ve gone off course, taken a wrong turn, something has happened and you are not where you are supposed to be.

 

Personally, I hate to ask for directions. Some categorize this as male behavior but I am very much a woman and I very much detest asking for directions. So I tried to figure out where I went wrong. And, as we might expect, I made things worse. Because if I knew where I was going, I wouldn’t have gotten lost in the first place, right? But I’m hard headed and so I carried on for quite a while convinced that I knew better than anyone I could ask for help. And if I could only get back to where I started, well then I’d be ok. But road signs failed me, my internal sense of navigation was already hopelessly misguided. What could I do, then, but ask for help? And I did. And had I asked for help sooner I could have been home hours earlier, comfortable in the confines of my home.

 

Do you ever feel like you’ve fallen off track with your progress? When you do, do you ever try to apply your own fixes to it? Whether you stop eating or attempt to “test” your pouch, these fixes are often misguided. Like my misread road signs, you have to have some sense of the direction you are going in order to correctly use the signs.

 

What does this mean, you are asking yourself.

 

It means that we all make mistakes, we all get lost, we all sometimes wander from the path we have set out on. To get back we often need to ask for help even if it is a pain in the butt. And we have to be willing to learn from our mistakes and have a plan to either get back to where we started from or where we want to eventually arrive.

 

The post-operative experience is hard work. It is neither easy nor finite. You are not “finished” when you get to your goal weight—that is not your final destination. Life is your final destination and, such as it is, life is a continual work in progress. To allow ourselves to believe, even for a little while, that we don’t need to keep working on ourselves is a deception and a disservice.

 

So while there is room in life for spontaneity, and for adventure, and for excitement, there should also be a basic blueprint, a line that you follow (although sometimes you may meander), because first and foremost, you cannot find your way back to a path that does not exist.

So this week I challenge those who are lost. What was your path? What was your goal? Did you achieve it before you got lost? If not, were you close? And did you really get lost or is the path you thought you were on not really the path at all.

All challenging questions, but answering them is the key to finding your way home.

It isn’t everyday that I see a term here on OH that I do not know the meaning of. This week I finally broke down and asked what the acronym “NSV” stood for and was told that it means a non-scale victory—those small yet very important experiences we have that affirm for us that we really are making progress even when the beloved (lol) scale refuses to move.  I love this concept!

 

The existence and necessity of NSV’s, however, leads me to contemplate on one of the things I find hardest about this whole process: rapid change.

 

I would liken my experience in the first year post-op to one of those television shows where you see a main character moving in “real time” with the whole world moving around them in fast forward. In reality, the world’s movement is real time but we can’t seem to catch up. To us life is moving at a snail’s pace while big changes are happening very fast all around us.

I was trying to describe the experience to a friend. I told her to imagine that she woke up one morning and her hair was a slightly different color. You notice it and are curious about it. You look at yourself constantly in the mirror and try to decide a) if the color really did change or if it is just your imagination and b) if it did change, do you like the change? And just when you have accepted it and think everything is going to be ok, you wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and the color has changed again!

 

In these times of great change I latch on to things that are constant—family and friends, places I like to go, things I like to do, but even those change. Relationships with family and friends change, in part, because our respective identities morph along with my body. The places I like to go change because of my increased energy level as do the things I like to do. So what’s left? What is there to be the stable ground upon which I stand as the world whizzes by in a blur?

 

My friends I don’t have a simple answer for you. I would theorize this need for consistency is at the root of so-called “replacement addictions.” Food was our constant, but in the absence of food—and in the presence of such rapid change in nearly every area of our lives—we latch onto the first enjoyable experience we have. It may be shopping. It may be cleaning. It may be frequenting Obesity Help. I’m not ashamed to share that I was quite “lost in the sauce” for a while and sought refuge here on this site because it was the same people every day, day in day out. This is probably why I don’t get as annoyed as some further-outs about the repetitive questioning. It gives me grounding. It lets me know I’m still here even though I am not the me that I am used to being (did that make any sense?)

 

But with that comes a warning: too much of anything is still too much. Replacing one unhealthy relationship with another to provide consistency might be comforting but it almost always comes back to bite you in the butt. So what do you do?

 

Whatever you need to do to stay sane! If you need to be a creature of habit for a while, do it—and don’t you let anyone make you feel strange for doing so! If you need to rebel against the establishment for a while—do it! And don’t let anyone make you think you are doomed to failure for doing so. That’s a controversial thing to say I know because by getting this surgery we are automatically supposed to be enamored with all the tools needed to beat food addiction. In reality, we are only equipped to beat obesity. Obesity and food addiction are two different things and are NOT mutually exclusive.

 

So this week I encourage you to let yourself go through your post-operative adolescence—whatever that may bring. I would not advise going it alone. Talk to the people you love about what you need, what you’re going through, what you’re proud of, what you find difficult, what scares you, and what motivates you. Make them aware that this is a time of great change for you and that you don’t quite know how you’ll come out the other end. And then go and live it out. Because to suppress your process is to prolong it. It’ll come out one way or the other. To me, the best non-scale victory I ever had was knowing how much control I have in how it comes out and what gets done with it.

 

Have a great week.

Here’s the “pain in the butt” thing about decision making. Whether we make the right decisions for the right reasons or vice versa, every decision we make has an impact on us psychologically.

 

We tend to forget that in the passion of the moment. We think only of how we feel right now, letting our id coax us into a decision that later makes us feel regretful, perhaps not of the decision itself but maybe the haste with which we went into the decision or the lack of reverence we showed for the consequences.

 

To use an extremely simplistic example that relates well to post-weight loss surgery, let’s look at the case of the sugar-free Girl Scout cookie. Yes, I said a cookie. I often shy away from talking about food in my inspirations because food is not the battle we fight, but the weapon with which we fight it, but in this case the cookie works well.

 

The serving size is 3 cookies. That serving has 160 calories, 22 grams of carbohydrates. Many of us can eat this without the side effect of dumping and while it does not taste exactly like the gooey, sugar-filled chocolate chip cookies of days old, it commands enough of the sensory experience to get us by.

 

So one day we decide to eat the cookies. Our sweet tooth has been nagging us. Our Aunt Flo has visited. We’ve had a long day and want to settle down to a nice treat. And we eat the cookies. And they are good. But after we eat them, something tends to happen to us post-ops. Thoughts start creeping in. “Should I have eaten the cookies?  Look how many carbs are in them! How many carbs did I eat the rest of the day! These are simple carbs right? This is what made me fat in the first place! I have no self control! Ahhhhhh!”

 

Thus three little cookies have become a very big deal.

 

By sharing this example I am NOT saying it is bad to eat sugar-free Girl Scout cookies. Please don’t take that from what I write. What I am saying is that we should learn, at least in the earlier stages post-op, to make decisions based on a myriad of factors including how certain decisions will make you feel.

 

I dealt with the cookie situation myself just minutes ago. I walked into the staff kitchen with the intentions of getting some water from the water machine. On the counter is a tin full to the brim of cookies. (thankfully they are not sugar-free so that is an automatic no-no for me as I dump…badly) They smelled soooooo good. I spent two full minutes trying to work out in my head if I thought a bite of one would make me dump. Then my brain kicked in saying, “yes, but then you’re going to spend the rest of the day beating yourself up for taking one damn bite of a cookie and, really, is it worth all that?” I decided it was not and thus bypassed the cookie tin, got my water, and got the hell out of Dodge.

 

Because here is the danger in the decision to go the other way. I eat a bite of the cookie, am inundated with those self-destructive, TOXIC thoughts. I doom myself to failure. I am a lost cause. RNY has not worked for me! Forget that I’ve lost the equivalent of a whole adult human and that I am healthier than I have been my whole life…no, no! I ate a bite of a cookie and am therefore going to hell. On the express bus.

 

Having decided this, why should I be conscientious about anything that I eat? Hell, I should just go get some buffalo wings right now. Some fries. A McDouble cheeseburger. Because I failed, and am doomed to keep failing, why bother to try?

 

The amazing thing about our minds in particular is that these thoughts are not a slow domino effect. We go from A to Z quite quickly and without stopping to give much thought to the build-up of this argument and how ridiculous it is.

 

So what it all boils down to is two things:

 

#1 – Own your decisions. This means more than accepting them. When you own your house you do more than occupy it. You make improvements to it. You plan for how you want it to be. You take care of it and protect it from damage. Same thing with your decisions. Go into them with a sense of ownership. Develop some standards that you can resort to in “fly by” situations like the cookie in the break room or the nachos at the staff party. But most of all, see a mistake for what it is. An less than stellar choice which has the potential to teach you a LOT about what you should or should not do next time you are faced with a similar situation.

 

#2 – Once you have taken ownership of your decisions, give some credence to your psyche. It is a fragile thing. You must protect it. Your decisions impact your psyche. Consider that when making decisions. Yes, it is a pain in the butt. Yes, in a so-called “normal” life we should not have to stop and do this exercise at every fork in the road but guess what? We’re not normal! (whatever that is) Before making a decision with the potential to evoke toxic thinking (and you’d know this if you develop your standards), think about how the outcome of your decision will make you feel. If it’s worth it—go for it. If it’s not, consider passing.

 

I write this because I see a lot of people who claim that their feelings happen to them. Your feelings don’t just happen to you. They are a result of some decision you made. Just as other people cannot make us feel any particular way, our feelings don’t materialize out of thin air. Be empowered to take charge of your feelings!

The curse and blessing in the passage of time is this: it keeps moving forward. No matter what we are doing, or want to be doing, no matter whether we feel ready to meet the challenges our futures hold, time keeps marching on.

 

The curse in this? Once time is spent we cannot get it back. Time spent fretting over mistakes and imperfections cannot be reclaimed as time enjoying the simple things and the blessings of life. We cannot change time spent with our heads buried in the sand into time spent taking action. Time given over to hate cannot be reclaimed for love. Time spent examining our every flaw and shortcoming cannot be relived to celebrate our strengths. To put it simply, in the case of time…once it’s gone it’s gone.

 

The blessing? Because time marches on, every day is a “clean slate” so to speak. Yesterday’s mistakes don’t have to belong to today. Last week’s bad feelings don’t have to frame this week’s resolve to feel better. We can’t do anything about yesterday but we do have some control over what happens today. It’s a risk but guess what? If we mess up today, there is always tomorrow.

 

If you think about it, the lesson in all this is clear. Be careful with your time. Think of it as the most precious commodity you handle during any given day. Before you give yourself over to negative and self-defeating thinking, reflect on the preciousness of time and ask yourself, “Is this emotion, are these actions, are these thoughts really worth the amount of time I am giving them? Considering I can never, ever get this time back, is this really what I’d like to be thinking about?”

 

Time keeps marching on, it is true, but each of us has an expiration date. For each of us our days are numbered. Whether you believe that this is done by pre-destination or the luck of the draw, we can all agree that we each have a finite amount of time to live and love and learn and act. And because we do not know the moment when our time in this world will end, we must have a particular reverence for how we spend our time. It’s the only time we’ve got.

 

There is a cliché that sounds corny, but rings true. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” It truly is. This week I empower you to live that way. Recognize the promise of each new day. Forgive yourself for past mistakes and instead of spending time beating yourself up for them, spend your time drawing lessons from them and move on. Spend time telling those you love that you love them. Spend time laughing. Spend time crying. Spend time lavishing passion over those people and causes about which you feel passionate. Spend time living.

 

Have a great week.