Step 24 – Broken Promises
I promised myself to have only two coffees this week and I still went and got me a third one. I promised myself to work out five times a week this year and yet I did it only three times last week. I promised myself not to eat pasta and I just had it the other day. Was I angry at myself? Yes, I was. Could I have done differently? Probably. Should I have made it differently? Probably. Does it mean all my work went down the toilet? No, it doesn’t. That only means that I had some weak days. This is the thing – even when you’re focused, you know your goal and you know why are you doing this, you will still have those bad days when not everything is going according to your plan. Sometimes it’s your fault and sometimes it isn’t (mostly though, it’s your fault). The whole work on yourself you’re doing has to be consistent, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll always be on point. You’re a human being. I’m a human being – we all make mistakes and we all are a constant work-in-progress.
You’ll be falling down, you will be having these days when you are supposed to not drink alcohol and eat heavy food and yet there you are, sitting and enjoying your pizza and a third beer. It will be happening. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with that. It’s ok to trip or even fall down, but the key is to come back on the right track and keep on. Don’t beat yourself up because you failed a few times (like I did). Instead, wake up the next day and say – today I’m doing everything according to my plan. And the next day you do the same. The same the next day. The more you’ll be getting up on your feet, the smaller the chances are that you will be falling down again. You’ll become stronger and stronger and there will be less and less days when you break your own promises.
I challenged myself in February that… I’ll be doing whatever I wanted. I promised myself to not have such a strict schedule and fill my days from the morning till the evening and let myself eat more ”different things” I wanted to. And there are a few things I learned this last month. One of them is that it’s not very healthy to have your schedule filled up completely – that every hour you have to do something. It just doesn’t work for long term. You’ll become a prisoner of your own planner. But I also learned that we, as people, need a structure: that if you let your day just fly, it will really fly away from you and you won’t accomplish anything. So I came to a conclusion which might not be that big for you, but it helped me: namely, that having a plan for the next day is crucial, because you’ll simply lose this day (at least I’m losing it), but filling up every hour of it with important activities will give you a heart attack soon. So plan your day ahead, but leave some space for something that gives you pleasure and some room – in case one of the activities takes more time than you thought it would. In other words – schedule fewer things to accomplish, but make sure you accomplish these that you put on your list. And the second thing I learnt – eating clean, makes your days way more productive than on any other diet. And I should remember that the next time I see a bowl of pasta.
