Change. Life is full of change. Embrace it or ignore it or avoid it, we all have choices when the need for change is staring us right in the face. I tend to think if there is something you really need to change, it will chase you. Reminders will pop up with persistence. If you force change before it is time, I believe obstacles will arise and things will often be out of place or fail to go to according to plan. A friend of mine is divorced, has an empty nest, is ready to sell her house and wants to go somewhere else. She really wants a total overhaul of her life. She has yet to figure out where or how and is struggling with all of the inconsistency in her life. She sent me a text with a quote recently (author is Carl Jung from what The Google tells me): What you resist, persists. My response back was, “What you resist will eventually slap you in the head.” She agreed with me. Change can be easy and change can be uncomfortable. I think change is uncomfortable more often than not. I do not mean changing your nail polish color or your shoes. I mean looking in the mirror and embracing the good, the bad, or the ugly; then figuring out what to do about some or all of it.
The same aforementioned friend and I were talking about what it takes to drive someone to truly change their ways. Based on her observations of others, hitting rock bottom can be an effective driving force. If you resist change, eventually rock bottom will be pressed up against your face. At that point you can do something or do nothing and just stay where you are, at the bottom. It is the “I can’t take anymore of this” phase that probably pulls the average person away from rock bottom. Personally I try to mitigate any type of rock bottom scenario – except for Christmas cookies. Inevitably, I eat so many Christmas cookies between Thanksgiving and New Year’s that my body (and my jeans) beg for mercy. I force myself to throw out all of the junk in my house and then suffer through cravings for a couple weeks. Otherwise, I try to be objective, try to keep myself in check and pay attention to the winds of change.
Several years ago, my father had a heart attack – he is a-okay. It was this event that inspired me to make changes in my own life to ensure I am as healthy as I can be. When you have a major medical event and it is necessary to make immediate changes, it has to be, well, really uncomfortable. My Dad had to change what he was eating cold turkey, which meant my Mom did too since she does most of the food shopping and food preparation. I decided to start evaluating what I eat and how I eat to enable a healthier lifestyle as I (gasp) get older. I want to avoid cold turkey and permanence. One change I have made (among others) is a drastic reduction in desserts. I love cake, cookies, cupcakes yet have cut back my dessert habit tremendously. Though I am not 100% sugar free, a stash of cookies no longer exists in my house and my regular visits to my favorite pastry shop have ceased. I have set guidelines for myself because I want to live a long life. My goal is to avoid ever being told it is my last day ever eating something I enjoy.
To be continued – thank you for reading Part 1!
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