Delightful Descent

It's been one of those days for about a week. We all have them--stretches of time, whether hours, days, or weeks, where nothing really seems to gel. For me it probably has everything to do with falling out of the good habits that I spent all year cultivating: eating healthy, supplementing, working out, daily writing, socializing more, and the like. While I haven't been that bad at all in an objective sense (especially compared to the 20-year old version of myself), relative to the lifestyle I have been aiming for, I find myself way off-course. 

I should feel bad. That's what the brain is telling me. "You're going to lose all that work you've put in," it wants me to think. And while the negative thoughts are indeed present in the sense that I am aware of them, something is different. I've been here before, much deeper in the hole, where I started leaking self-confidence on a daily basis until one day I woke up and found I had none. This time is different. I know that today, by sleeping in, I didn't live to my full potential--I could have gotten stronger in the gym, or worked on a writing project. But didn't sleeping feel good? If I am honest with myself I know that I'm totally fine. My 100 pounds heavier self is very far away. He's probably dead and gone permanently. So what if I had ice cream a few days in a row? It's the fucking summer. We don't want ice cream to go out of existence, right? And if every person on the planet suddenly became "healthy" and put a hard stop to all forms of creamy ice, would the world be a better place? Okay, I guess it would, but that's not really a world I want to live in. I'd like people to be generally healthier and happier, sure, but we need the bad to have the good. And ice cream isn't bad at all, folks. It's just a matter of how you use it, like a gun (okay it's not a weapon but if you ate only ice cream for a long enough span you'd probably still die).

Anyway the point of all this is that we should learn to forgive ourselves for what we perceive as our failings or weaknesses. It's a great idea to engage in self-reflection, in fact Confucius would say that such recrimination is the noblest path to wisdom. But when that recrimination goes into beating yourself up mentally, there's a problem. And in our culture, we tend to exhibit programming that is downright suicidal in terms of self-image. So instead of spending your precious thoughts focused on how you failed today, think about what good you did today. And if you can't think of anything, stop reading this and go do something good, and think about that. Most importantly, when you wake up tomorrow morning, don't take today with you. Forget what you perceive as having fallen short on, and begin each day with thankfulness that you have an opportunity to try again. And hey, when life makes it too hard to resist the ice cream, fucking enjoy it. 

Otherwise it was a waste of ice cream.