Ayn Rand Quote of the Week:
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
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The Bane of Our Existence?
Posted on May 25th, 2009 2 comments
No man is free who is not master of himself. – EpictetusWe mustn’t let our passions destroy our dreams. – Anonymous
Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates
I hate where my mind goes sometimes. Especially when it starts doing it’s dirty little trick of thinking about me in that brutally honest way it has of focusing on the truth. It almost always does this at a time when I least want to hear it.
I like sleeping in. I enjoy drinking soda’s and eating junk food. It’s enjoyable wasting a whole evening watching TV episodes of my favorite shows. It’s educational spending all day reading blog posts and articles on the Internet, rather than working on projects I should be working on.
The problem is when I sleep in I miss out on building the relationships I’ve started on Twitter and FriendFeed or in real life. When I indulge in lots of soda and junk food, I gain weight and feel miserable later. When I spend all day reading I miss opportunities to earn that which will give me even more free time later. The truth? There is always a cost to what we choose to do. I hate that.
Most of us do, I think. We indulge in whatever is our current passion, then bitch to whoever will listen about the consequences of our indulgence. The world is a decidedly uncomfortable place that is constantly asking us what we are willing to give in exchange for what we really want. Most of us resist this, I know I do, and I’m wondering why?
I mean it seems fair to me when I think about it. If I want X, then I need to give up Y for it. If I don’t want to give up Y, then X isn’t as valuable as I thought it was. The problem comes when I start thinking, “Why can’t I have both?”
The answer is simplicity itself. Some things just aren’t compatible. I can’t have meaningful relationships and sleep at the same time. I can’t waste my time and pursue a dream at the same time. Excess calories cause weight gain. I can’t have fatness and thinness at the same time. Not possible. We live in a world where reality exists, and it matters.
So knowing this, that I live in a world where nothing is achieved without a fair exchange, why do I resist? Why do you resist (come on I know you do at times — we all do)?
I got to thinking about this today, and I believe I’ve come up with at least a partial answer. Bear with me for a minute. I’m thinking out loud.
If I resist exchanging Y for X it’s more than likely that I don’t fully appreciate the value of X otherwise the exchange would be easy to make. X doesn’t mean as much to me as Y does. I don’t have a good enough reason for making the exchange. Thinness isn’t as important to me as the experience of downing another soda or eating another cupcake. I don’t see a clear enough, valuable enough benefit in saying no to the soda.
So in order to turn things around, I need to ask myself what I really, truly want. I must also answer the most important question, Why do I want it? If I can’t answer that question in a way that makes me see the value of self-control, then I’ll always opt for indulgence. However, if I can answer that question in a way that makes me see that the status quo is clearly of inferior value to me, then I’ll opt for self-control every time, because the reward is worth the cost.
The reason most diets don’t work is because the why is not adequately answered. The reason most goals are never achieved is because the goal setter doesn’t comprehend or believe in the true value of his goal.
Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is why the most important question in breaking a habit or pursuing a goal? Is it a question that should be asked at all? What do you think?
Picture by flicker user fczuardi under Creative Commons License. Use of this picture does not constitute an endorsement by fczuardi of the ideas in this post.
2 responses to “The Bane of Our Existence?”
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I couldn’t agree more, Dave. I think that asking and answering “why?” is critical to achieving success. And I will give you a real-life example, inspired by the photo of junk food. When I was younger, I had no problem with weight. I was 86 pounds when I graduated from high school! Then, the womanly curves arrived and as the years passed and I became more sedentary, partially through choice and partially because of a bad car accident, the pounds slowly accumulated.
By the beginning of 2008, I had gone up to 160 pounds (I’m 5′2″)! I decided I really wanted to lose weight, eat healthier and exercise more. Like most people, right?! To set myself up for success, I decided I needed two things. I had to be motivated to achieve short-term goals but I had to be inspired to get to the long-term goal.
For me, what has been working is little rewards for small achievements. I give myself points for eating well, exercising and other healthy activities and treat myself to small things. I wouldn’t be able to keep this up over the long run though if I weren’t inspired by the strong vision of a thinner, sexier and healthier me who didn’t have as much back pain, who felt more rested and who had way more energy.
Since starting on this on Dec 27, 2008, I’m now at 131 pounds with 11 more to go to reach my dream goal of 120!
For my clients who have trouble coming up with something that motivates and inspires them, I start off with the idea of “doing no harm.” What things can you do so that at least you are “doing no harm” to yourself? I find that this concept can often get them started towards taking action and that often, motivation and inspiration then has room to arrive.
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Wow. What an inspiring story. I appreciate you’re sharing it.
I, too, ballooned way up there. At one point I was over 400 lbs. I’m back down now, but still have about 60 lbs to go. My ultimate goal is to get to 200 lbs and see how I feel and will probably drop a little further from there, but 200 will at least get me back to the “healthy” range. I struggle daily with my “junk food” addiction, but have been bringing that under control by doing much the same thing you are doing. Rewarding myself when I reach a “mini-goal”.
I love your idea of starting off with “doing no harm”. That is a really good idea. And I’m sure most people can grab ahold of that. The most important thing is to always realize that there is a payoff for everything we do. Once we can make that payoff of less value to us than the goal, then commitment to the goal becomes much easier.
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