Day 335 & Back from the Dominican Republic

Day 335 Record Keeping
Day 304 Fixed Meditation 
Day 250 Bodyweight Exercise  (3 typewriter pushups)
Day 177 Writing (203 words)
Day 350 Eating = 66
Day 107 Work = 43
Good sleep, good wakeup. 

Back from the Dominican Republic
I actually don’t think I would’ve done so badly with eating and habits in general if it weren’t for the fact I was also working and horribly sick. In many cases I kept automatically making correct food choices, but then I totally lost it a couple days in. 

I’m starting to feel better. But I have another trip coming up. 

I’m liking this challenge of working with travel and sickness and seeing how it works with habit formation. I’m still shocked at how often my superhabits are done despite the turbulence these last week or two.

Day 92 & Guilt and the Necessity of Forgiveness for Habit Formation

Day 92 Record Keeping SRHI = 70
Day 60 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 72
Day 6 Burpee SRHI= 42
Day 106 Eating SRHI = 58
Good night sleep, great wakeup.

Guilt & Forgiveness

Yesterday I felt really down, and because of that I drank a little more than my max of two glasses of wine. I wanted to get out of the house, so I went out. I didn’t get crazy, but the next day I just felt bad. Bad about messing up. Bad about deviating from the Master Plan. Bad about not being strong enough to resist being pushed into a state of feeling down, as bizarre as that sounds. 

Trying to create a habit by will is an almost impossible thing, and I think we often don’t think of it in those terms. We create an image of the perfect person - the ideal person - and we make that person an average that we are just too flawed to live up to. 

But most people don’t have it together. Sure, one guy might be a doctor, and another might be a work-out master. But does he floss? Does he know another language? Does he meditate and play and instrument or eat right?

I have no doubt such people exist, but they are a lot rarer than we think, especially in the depths of sorrow or guilt, when everyone else seems somehow essentially better.

And that’s the thing - I grew up thinking that a person with bad habits lacked discipline, and that this was some sort of fundamental deficiency. But this isn’t the case at all - it’s a skill that can be built upon, that has to be painstakingly worked on.

Every habit is hard. You will be tested and you will fail. And if you don’t - you got extremely lucky. Do another one, and another one and breaking points become inevitable. Forgiveness is necessary to put yesterday’s failures aside in order to succeed the next day, and the one after.

The goal of forming a habit isn’t that the process will be perfect. It’s surviving the length of time in order to achieve automaticity. It’s a marathon, not a track meet. 

I realize that in this stage of this whole project, mood swings will happen, and like a brooding adolescent, I’m seeing loss of poise as a symptom of growth. I’m forgiving myself and moving on; I’ve got a lot of habits to form.