Monthly Archives: May 2012

Habits, Health, Productivity

Change Only One Habit at a Time

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I don’t use cuss words a lot. They’re not terribly eloquent. But every now and then they are absolutely perfect for conveying sentiment. And now is one of those times, I feel.

Changing habits is a fucking bitch.

After the birth of my second child, I had become very unhealthy. Given the endless work of two small children, my husband and I resorted to a lot of fast food and processed food for quick meals. Eating these poisons disguised as food, our health declined rapidly. By 2009, I would spend days in bed because I felt too miserable, had no energy, and was in too much pain to get out of bed.

And then, I had That Moment. We all have That Moment in our lives. It has only happened to me twice in my life: once when I was 19-years-old and once in 2009 when I was 40-years-old. It’s when you wake up and say, “I’m not going to live like this anymore. I don’t want to be like this anymore.” It’s when you decide that you’re not going to be in an unhealthy relationship anymore, or you’re not going to stay working for a terrible boss doing a job that you hate anymore. For me in 2009, it’s when I decided that I didn’t want to spend everyday sick in bed and in pain anymore. I wanted to be healthy.

Now, fast forward three years to 2012. You would think that I would be the perfect example of health by now. I’ve been working towards this goal for three years. I should be glowing, strong and full of energy.

Did I mention that changing habits is a fucking bitch?

First I had to learn about nutrition. That was a journey in itself and one that I continue today. Then there were tons of attempts, failures, false starts and wrong turns. I’m much healthier today than I was in 2009. I don’t spend everyday in bed and my body isn’t in a constant state of low-level pain anymore, but I’m not anywhere near my goal of abundant energy and beautiful glowing health.

And here is my first bit of advice to you as I distill three years of experience into a single sentence: Change only one habit at a time. This statement is so simple and will be disobeyed time and time again by so many people, including me, and yet it is the cornerstone of change.

You see, when you change an ingrained habit, you spend the entire day in fierce battle with yourself. It is exhausting and you don’t always win. All of your effort and energy needs to be channeled into a single significant habit change. If you try to change more than one habit, your energy becomes diluted as you spread yourself too thin, and you lose the battle.

Recently along my continued journey towards health, I tried to change three habits at once. In my impatience, I lost everything and now am back exactly where I started at the first of the year. I’ve made no progress except to learn a very valuable lesson:

Be patient. Enjoy the journey. Quit counting down the days. And change only one habit at a time.

Art

The Source of Art

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(Crossposted to: Life with Science)

Twelve years ago today on May 15, 2000 is when I first laid eyes on my future husband, Matt. We worked in the same company, but I worked in the Austin office and he worked in the London office. He had flown into Austin to train us on the company’s proprietary software. Other than Matt, I was the first one into the office that morning. We worked in a large, open-plan room with low-rise cubicles and the room was always dark because the programmers preferred for the lights to be off. He was sitting at a desk off in the corner working at a computer, his face lit up by the computer monitor in the dark room.

Two days later, I had a massive crush on him and two months later we were dating. And one year later we were married.

So May 15 is an auspicious day for me. It’s a day of love and beginnings. So, today is the official day that I begin writing as a career — truly begin. No more waltzing with fear and hiding from fate. I start work today.

And I’ve been conducting a postmortem in my head of all my past failed attempts. I can create brilliant small vignettes — little snippets of a story that read like poetry and carry deep meaning. But whenever I try to write an entire book, it reads, at best, like an 8th-grader’s attempt at fiction. The kernel of the story holds promise, but the surrounding prose drags it down into the realm of the novice, lacking clever timing and meaningful metaphor.

And why is this? My conclusion is that the failed attempts at an entire book have never come from my soul. Now, we can sit here and debate whether we even have souls or not, but the truth of the matter is, every artist creates from a personal and sacred spot deep inside of them. And when someone creates from this place of true emotion and lived experience, the resulting art has a life and an impact. Its beauty resonates outside of and separate from the artist.

And I think, when I’m forcing myself to just write through a story, that I’m not writing from that sacred spot. And the resulting story leaves the reader without an experience.

So, I’ll try to write from that sacred place. The story may be jumbled and it may meander untethered, but at least it will be true. And it certainly can’t be any worse than my past attempts.

 

Hope

A Blank Canvas is a Gift

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I’m 43 years old. Depending on your personal position on the timeline of life, you may think, “That’s so old,” or “Gosh, you’re still so young.” Or perhaps both. Old enough to feel regret but young enough to have the time to do something about it.

And I’ve been wallowing pretty badly in self-pity, going through my midlife crisis. As my skin begins to wrinkle and my hair begins to gray, I stare longingly at pictures of 20- and 30-something year olds, knowing that I will never have the stunning look of youth again. Those days are gone.

There are five stages of grief — the mourning of anything that is lost: 1. Denial, 2. Anger, 3. Bargaining, 4. Depression, 5. Acceptance. And I hope to goodness that I’m on to Acceptance soon because I’m becoming very tired of this midlife crisis thing. It’s been very annoying and inconvenient.

But in the acceptance of passing youth, I think that I’m finding myself. In the knowledge that I am the age that I am and there is absolutely nothing that I can do about that, I’m finding that I actually just like being me. It’s been a rough and bumpy ride to this point, full of tears, longing and anger, but I think I’m near the end.

When you are young, you constantly remake yourself in society’s current image of youth. Whichever subculture you choose, you wear the uniform and adopt the mannerisms to fit into your chosen group.

But none of that is available to you when you are older because all of our cultural images revolve around youth. We no longer are able to remake ourselves, left only with a blank canvas and painful longing and misunderstanding.

But every blank canvas is a gift. A divorce, a move, any kind of forced significant change: you are left shattered but with great opportunity. And, after being punched in the gut by life, when you finally get your wind back and are able to stand again, you realize that before you lies a wonderful, beautiful blank canvas. What shall I paint this time?

I’ll still miss my youthful skin, but it is pleasant to realize that I don’t have any references or ideas to model myself after. I have only me. And it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Hope

When You Finally Allow Yourself to Be Who You Truly Are, You Become Heroic

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It’s extremely hard to allow yourself to just be. There are parts of every person’s personality that are so intense and over the top as to be embarrassing. I’ll give you an example. I plan and make lists to a stupid degree. I’m the kind of person that would make lists of my lists. I have lists and planners and calendars littered around my house and filling up my hard drive. In fact, I make so many lists and planners, that I used to hide my habit, embarrassed of all of my silly lists.

The problem is, when you feel embarrassed, you also feel shame. And when you feel ashamed, you feel like there is something wrong with you. So I hid my secret, carefully guarding my book of lists and calendars, never letting anyone on my computer, fearful that my dirty little secret would be revealed to the world.

It was a heavy burden to carry and one that I could never get rid of because, in the end, my neurotic borderline-OCD planning is who I am and I can’t change that. It’s at the core of who I am. I can change habits, but I can’t change core personality traits. So I remained embarrassed and sad and carried my secret with me.

And then I watched my daughter. She is seven years old and she makes lists and loves office supplies and calendars. At the tender age of seven, she wanted to learn Microsoft Word so she could write her lists up on the computer and print them out. Sure, it’s easy to say, “Well, look at the environment in which she is raised. You make your lists and you have the big family calendar up in the kitchen.” This is true. Her environment nurtures this part of her, but it’s more than that. My son has absolutely no interest in lists or calendars. He could care less. But my daughter loves going to Office Depot as much as I do. Her desk is her sanctuary, just as mine is to me.

But there is one notable and significant difference between me and my daughter: she isn’t embarrassed. She embraces this part of herself with joy. She writes up her lists and plays with her calendar with a happiness that comes from within. She has so much fun, and she doesn’t care who watches her.

As we grow up and enter society and try to fit in, we start to hide parts of ourselves — important parts of ourselves. I’ve also hidden my love of Renaissance Festivals and Medieval music because I didn’t want to be seen as a big nerd. These parts of my personality slink around in the darkness like thieves staying to the night.

This message really spoke to me in How to Train Your Dragon. Hiccup wants so badly to fit in with all of the other Vikings who kill dragons. He tries desperately to kill dragons, but makes a total mess of it every time because, inside his heart, he’s not a dragon killer. There is a foreshadowing to this theme when his dad tells him, “You are many things, Hiccup, but a dragon killer is not one of them.” Of course, his dad doesn’t say this as a compliment, for to be a heroic Viking in the village of Berk, one must become a dragon killer.

And one of the most poignant conversations is at the very beginning of the movie as Hiccup’s mentor, Gobber, is walking him back to his home after he has made yet another terrible mess while trying to kill a dragon. And Gobber says, “Stop trying so hard to be something you’re not.” And Hiccup replies, “I just want to be one of you guys.”

And it’s when he has an opportunity to kill a dragon, and he can’t, that he quits trying to be something he’s not. And when he finally allows himself to be exactly who he is — a dragon trainer, not a dragon killer — he becomes heroic.

And that’s the message of this long-winded blog entry. I know it’s hard. I know from experience that it’s hard to allow yourself to be exactly who you are. It’s hard to publically admit that you really want to dress like Emilie Autumn or that you want to dance on stage or any of a million things that are hidden away.

But when you finally allow yourself to be exactly who you are, you will become heroic.