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| If you don't change your sheets, you might find a delicious surprise in your bed! |
Today’s post is the
first in a multipart series in which I discuss things that I intend to do and
habits that I want to change or eradicate but, for whatever reason, I don’t. I
know we all have things like this. Like, nobody intends to not change their sheets
for a month and a half, but life gets so hectic, and you have so many
obligations that one day you wake up, and it is December 15, and you find a
piece of candy corn in the sheets from that Halloween night pity party you
threw yourself featuring Brach’s Autumn Mix and wine. (While it may not be the
best culinary pairing in history, it certainly was a great mood booster!)
Actually, I think we all intend to be better versions of ourselves than we
currently are, but it is just so hard.
It kind of makes you wonder how those Buddhist monks who give up all worldly comforts in the search for enlightenment even do it. I mean, no tv and no baked Cheetos? That is a serious
vow of poverty!
My downfall in
changing habits, and in adopting new, better habits always lies in the
follow-through. I am a great planner, in fact, I dare say I may be the best
planner in the world. I am always coming up with fantastic ideas for how I will
improve myself. Once I get the idea, I will make lists, and then I will use my
lists to make more lists, and it will likely involve several iPhone apps that
would be listed under the heading of “productivity.” Often, in my case, the
arrival of a new self-improvement idea heralds the coming of several new iPhone
productivity apps that I am so sure I am going to use to absolutely transform my life.
Take the time I
decided that I needed to exercise regularly. Well, I actually decide this just
about every day of my life, so it is hard to be specific about which time it
might have been. That particular time I decided that if I just had a visual
reminder of when I had and hadn’t exercised I would certainly adopt a daily
exercise routine. I found an app called Streaks
to help me in this endeavor. Streaks
lets you set a calendar for a certain behavior, and every time you perform that
behavior you mark an “x” on the calendar. In my case, I wanted to see x’es on
every day of the calendar to show that I had, indeed, exercised each day. Well,
I exercised on the first day that I had the app by walking on the treadmill for
45 minutes, and I gleefully marked a big red x on the day. The next day, citing
to myself how tired I was, I lay on the floor and did some half-assed crunches,
but, because it was sort of exercise, I marked an x on that day too.
Intoxicated by the
sight of those two x’es, I thought I better keep the streak going. The next day
I didn’t really do any exercise to speak of, but I did stand up for 20 minutes
during my school’s afternoon carpool, plus, I walked out to the mailbox to get
the mail. Surely those two actions constituted exercise because I moved about a
bit for a small period of time. I decided that they did, and I continued in the
same mindset for the remainder of the month. I did plenty of standing, jaunting
to the car and mailbox, and a few insincere leg lifts, but no exercise to speak
of. However, I had my beautiful calendar full of big red x’es, and I was
feeling just fine! Do you see what I mean? My problem lies in the execution. I
have learned over time that I get way too wrapped up in the iPhone apps I use
to assist me in my self-improvement quests, and that I do not focus enough on
the tasks at hand. I might spend all my time using the apps to make lists or to
plan for my good intentions, when in reality I should have been using the time
to execute them.
One of my biggest
self-improvement fails, and an ongoing one at that, is my constant belief that
I will one day get up early in the morning before work and exercise. I am like
a child with an unwavering belief in Santa with my optimism about this
possibility. So, every morning, I set my alarm for 4:30 am. Who gets up at 4:30
am, except for monks and maybe farmhands? I have the misguided notion that I
will get up at this time, do an hour on the treadmill, and 30 minutes of the
P90X Ab Ripper routine. After this type of workout, I will probably need to lie
down for several hours to recover, but in my mind I will get a shower, get
dressed, go to work and work productively for eight or nine hours without
falling asleep at my desk.
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| HBO Go brainwashes me into not exercising. |
Every day, when the
alarm goes off at 4:30, I look at it and think, “I can sleep for another hour
and a half!” and then I roll over and go back to sleep. Later, when I wake up
for good, I tell myself that I will exercise in the evening, after all of my
day’s obligations are over, yet, when the end of the day rolls around, hearing
the siren song of my bed and the possibility of watching HBO Go on my Apple TV,
the desire to exercise just seems to evaporate right then and there. As I am
lying in bed, drifting off, after I have set my alarm for 4:30 am, I think, “I
will just exercise tomorrow morning…” It is a vicious cycle, and I believe many
attempts at self-improvement fall into this category. We mean well, we try
hard, we have only the best of intentions, yet there we remain, firmly planted on
the road to hell.
Autumn Mix image courtesy of http://www.candycrate.com
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