9.21.22

This morning I finished listening to HIDDEN BRAIN - YOU 2.0: BEFRIENDING YOUR INNER VOICE, in which host Shankar Vedantam and Psychologist Ethan Kross talk about using rituals to help quiet the Inner Pessimist that gets louder in our heads when we’re dealing with a struggle. It brought back to mind the episode HIDDEN BRAIN - CREATURES OF HABIT. I’ve thought a lot about the idea that sheer will power will really get you through very little in life. Adrenaline may kick in at moments when you truly need it; but as for long-term goals, that adrenaline won’t help you stick to a long and challenging road. Rather than making an emotional commitment to take on the universe and weather the challenges, and then beating ourselves up when we inevitably fail, we’re much better off if we can make it easy for ourselves to be good. This means making it convenient to do the right thing by removing potential obstacles, and making it harder to do the thing that we would naturally fall into (and then regret). Another phrase that always comes to mind is, “If you fail to plan, then plan to fail.” I KNOW these things are true; and yet I find there is a lot of friction working against me when I try to act on them.

There are certain things that I want to do consistently, every day. I want to spend quality time with each of my Big 3 (Ray, Dara & Phaedra), do my physical therapy exercises, go for a walk outside, throw one hour of cleaning at some part of the house, do something to improve/grow PaperMoon, practice my French on DUOLINGO, prepare food for dinner, stay current on phone messages, emails, To Do items and paperwork in my office, review my songs and dances for Shrek, etc. Oh yeah, and now, write a Blog post! Reading over this list, I think the biggest friction is that there’s only 1 of me… And I also know that I do my best work earlier in the day; and when I can just focus on 1 thing at a time, without having to multi-task. Another part of the friction is this feeling of guilt – if I’m enjoying a walk outside, I feel like I should be getting dinner ready. If I’m answering emails, I look around after an hour and can’t see any fruits of my labor, and the sink is still full of dirty dishes. And vice versa. I also hesitate to get involved in something I know I’m going to want to commit several uninterrupted hours to, if I know I don’t have that kind of time.

I’ve thought of several ways to remove some of the friction:

·        Make a schedule for each day, the night before. This way I’ll have an idea of what absolutely needs to get done by when, and also when my big chunks of free time will be.

·        Develop a “Morning Routine” – barring early morning commitments, I do the same things in the same order each morning. This becomes a habit when done ritualistically, and then it will be harder to break out of the habit once it’s become fully developed.

·        Figure out which things I can do every-other-day and then alternate between them, so that I can throw big chunks of time at them and not worry about the thing I’m not doing, because I know I can do it tomorrow.

·        Make lists of meals & print out recipes, so that I can find meals that will suit everyone (even if I have to slightly modify them for different family members) so that I have the ideas ready to go, and I know what I need at the grocery store. I need to plan a few days in advance so that I don’t have all the planning & shopping to do when I only have time for prepping.

And now… I’m off for my morning walk. I always seem to get good ideas during those – maybe some further inspiration will strike!