I was at the turn around point on my run yesterday and the ideas were coming crisp and clear. I love when that happens, for me that’s the true runners high. The clutter of my brain falls away and fully thought though "ideas come together. There is no doubt, just clarity. I can process the day ahead without judging myself or the tasks with any sort of guilt on why it’s taken me so long to do what I know I should.
As I rounded the corner and saw my shadow running along with me. I noticed a small paunch staring back at me, the notion of doing something about it “once and for all” came into focus.
We all have a list of things hanging over us that we have to face. Maybe it’s your health. Maybe it’s finances. Maybe it’s confronting a relationship elephant in the room. Whatever, for me I feel like there’s a few things in my life that if I just handled “once and for all,” my life would move forward substantially and the “change” I wear y’all out about, may actually occur.
It’s about finishing things. Seeing them through to the end. Sometimes those things are hard and take awhile. Sometimes it’s sucking it up for an hour or so and just getting it going in the right direction. Either way, having “finished” a few of these “once and for all” items in my life. The satisfaction of doing so is great.
It’s great because these items haunt us for long periods of time. Sometimes years (decades). They are the types of things that we know deep down we should just do but we don’t want to. We don’t want to because they’re usually difficult or laced with pitfalls we don’t want to tackle. So we push them aside but never out of mind. “Once and for alls” are the ultimate in the “open loop” mindset. That being the notion that our brain is full of half started and unfinished business that we think we are ignoring, but really it’s right there the whole time, mocking us incessantly and making the rest of our life harder.
So today I am starting the whole30 diet. I’ve done it before with success. I’m doing it because despite what you may think and despite exercising like crazy, I have wintered up over the last months.
The “does anything matter?” mentality that’s accompanied the last few months has taken a foothold and I’ve proven moderation isn’t my thing. So I’m turning it up to 11 and making myself face the facts.
There’s a lot of these “once and for alls” in my life and I’m truly trying to start picking them off. The reality is they won’t go away until I do. You have them to, just lurking under the surface. Tapping. Annoying. “I’m in here, and I’m not going anywhere.” They call. “We all float down here.”
So today take the opportunity to start biting off one of your “once and for alls”. To start freeing yourself of just one of them. One step closer towards closing one big open loop.
Quit saying you’ll start tomorrow. We both know you won’t. Because there’s been a hundred tomorrow’s you haven’t started.
Because I’ve not started for months. Maybe this is truly something we are “all in together.”
#hugsandhi5s
