To do…or not to do.
- I’ll do it tomorrow.
- It’s early, I have time.
- Ten more minutes!
- Oh what’s another $200 for this [insert item you insist you need but actually already own multiple variations of].
- I’ll start eating better in the new year.
- What’s another bite?
- Ok, one more glass. But that’s it!
I was driving home today from work and had a single goal for the evening — work out. That’s it. No biggie. Easy enough. Forty minutes worth of quality time with my exercise guru, ShaunT. I opened the door, took off my boots and plopped on the couch. My eyes gazed towards the clock that’s nestled on the table next to my Samsung flastcreen and watched the hand move. Second by second. Another second. And another.
I felt a familiar feeling beginning to set in. I reached for my blanket that conveniently sat atop the corner of my couch and I slowly sank in deeper and deeper. Maybe I’ll just wake up really early tomorrow morning and get my work out in then. Yeah, I’ll do that.
My body more than gladly agreed (as a matter of fact, it pretty much already made up its mind the moment it hit the couch), but my mind wrestled with the decision. No big deal, it’s ONE work out. ONE night. Then I realized, the one work I was missing this evening was actually a culmination of thirty in the last few months. And along with that thirty sweat sessions came with a million more hours on Facebook or Google+ than I intended to allocate in my free time; which means the same number of hours I missed reading the bible or fifteen blog posts that should have already been written (this explains the crickets that’s made a nice home of my blog as of late). This realization got my thoughts snowballin’ out of control. Missing tonight’s work out was just a reflection of the gazillion additional mouthfuls of cake that I took over the holidays that has now amounted to what feels like 50 more pounds of body weight. It also explains why my credit card balance appeared to be significantly higher than normal. Yes, $10 here. $50 there.. Heck, why not — what’s another $1,000?
Anyone who knows me well knows I can stand my ground. Discipline is part of my DNA. When I make up my mind about something, changing its course is not an easy feat. As a matter of fact, it’s nearly impossible. Some will coin it as stubborness. I like to see it as having strong convictions.
Tonight, I realized I was losing ground on my ability to keep my foot on the ground. While my stance on the big and obvious things remained unshakable, I was on a dangerous road towards creating a habit of…well, not being able to stick to habits…which would therefore mean, they no longer qualify as such. And this can be devastatingly problematic. You see, If we can’t exercise self-control over something trivial, like following through on a plan we were sure we had already made up our minds about, how can we be confident that we will have the will power to remain true to the very things that our core values and beliefs rests upon? It’s important to work out those muscles. And it starts with the small things.
Tonight, ShaunT and I bonded, not for forty minutes, but for a full hour. My body hated me for it.
