Stickers! The secret to my success.

My time of sloth is nearing its end. A new semester has begun and a new month begins tomorrow. It is a perfect time to start a new challenge and I have (finally) decided what to do.

First, for the month of February, I will only eat food that I have cooked myself from scratch. I will neither purchase nor eat baked goods, vegan cheese, canned beans, and so forth. If I want cupcakes I must bake them myself. There are two exceptions. First is Tofu. Second, I may eat out twice in the month.

I was inspired to do this challenge by this video in which Michael Pollan claims that I can eat anything I want, so long as I cook it myself. The premise is that fattening foods are also labor intensive. It is much faster to cook healthy food than to bake pies and make french fries. So much time goes into making the high calorie dishes, goes the rationale, they will become dishes for special occasions only. I can see this. Think of how long it takes to make a good lasagna from scratch. And apple pie - when you have to make both the crust and the filling from scratch? So that is the first challenge.

Second, in the month of February I will complete a Plank & Jump Rope challenge and 10 Sun Salutation challenge. I'll post the details about those in the next blog.

I am just like the next person when it comes to picking a goal and sticking to it. I suck at it. Witness the month of January. I do believe I will be more successful this time because I have strategy on my side. A recent episode of The Colbert Report featured the author Charles Duhigg who has written the book "The Power of Habit".

Duhigg's main point is that forming a habit (or understanding one) isn't just about repeating an action over and over. It is essential to understand the underlaying reward that entices one to repeat the action. What is it about the habit that really gives you pleasure? 

His epiphany came when he realized the real reason he took a break every afternoon to go to his company's cafeteria for a cookie: He really enjoyed seeing his friends. It didn't matter what he ate, hanging out was the real reward. He stopped getting the cookies - and lost some weight. I can dig it.

I asked myself, in the instances when I have successfully reached a long-term goal, what reward kept me going?

With the juice feast, it was the pleasure of posting pretty pictures of gorgeous veggies. I enjoyed the challenge of arranging them and creating the lighting and deciding on what angle would best show off my masterpiece. I could post pictures of my meals - but that would get tedious after a while since I do tend to repeat meals a lot. 

With the 30 Day Bikram Yoga Challenge, the reward was much simpler: Stickers! 

That is really all it took. Every day for 30 days I endured temperatures above 105F at 50% humidity for 90 minutes of pretzel twisting torture all for the sake of coming down the stairs and plopping myself in front of the receptionist so that she could give me my sticker. It was like first grade all over again. And it WORKED! I am so proud of my little calendar and I can't wait to start a new one. 

Imagine something that simple, inexpensive yet emotionally pleasing being the magic behind your successes. Would it work for you?


Gotta run - I have some grocery shopping to do.

Doing Nothing

It is I 

I have a confession to make. I've been avoiding my blog, circling it as though it were a dangerous wild animal, looking at it sideways, pacing before it. I had a fabulous experience that I could have been blogging about. I finished a 30 day Bikram Yoga Challenge. That's pretty amazing! I started on December second and finished just in time for New Year's Eve on the thirty-first. It felt so good to end the year with another major accomplishment under my belt. Why, then, wasn't I blogging about it?

I'm thinking as I write and I'm realizing that perhaps I was actually rebelling against the driven over-achiever's culturally embedded imperative to always be producing. Without planning it, without acknowledging it, even, I took a break.

In the middle of the Bikram Challenge I started thinking about the next challenge. I needed to have something in place so that I didn't fall into idleness and wreck my goals for lack of planning. I had ideas. A jump rope challenge, a plank challenge, trying out a new style of yoga. It turns out that when I finished the Bikram Challenge, I was finished. I felt no motivation to jump into the next thing.

It has been nearly a month since I have done much of anything. Only now do I realize just how much I needed the down-time. I feel so much more creative and effective. I'm brimming with ideas for my classes (the new semester starts next week) and I have a couple of articles in the works. Yes, I know. Of course. Duh. Everybody knows this. Knowing is only a tenth of the battle.

This break was not my choice, really. I was scheduled to teach a class over the winter session at the institution I serve. The class was cancelled and I found out (due to my own distracted state) too late to line up another gig. I spent a few days panicking and then decided that I was not going to wind up wandering the streets. I had resources; I would use them. And then, uneasily, fretfully, I allowed myself to rest.

Although I have pretty much stayed on course food wise (no dairy or gluten but more carbs and fewer vegetables than I really should do), I've only worked out once since I finished the Bikram Challenge. I planned to make a bunch of videos and even set up my studio. I recorded myself singing one song, took a couple of pictures (see above and below) and that was it. I spent the rest of the time on marathon Hulu sessions and Facebook. I enjoyed being snowed in during the Great Polar Vortex of 0'14. Occasionally I left the house. Last week I started busking again. I'm going to need the money to cover what my savings don't cover until I get my first paycheck sometime in mid February.

Really resting is still new to me, believe it or not. United States culture has a prejudice against resting anyway (the local word for it is "lazy") but at least the tradition of a taking a vacation (inhumanely short though it might be) does exist. Thing is, my family, being from overseas, never caught on to that tradition.  My parents were both students and then both working. We never took an actual family vacation and I never learned how to truly give myself a break. Generally speaking, I work pretty much non-stop.

That ends this year - with one caveat. Next time I will be better prepared so that I can take a month off without worrying about my bills. I will be deliberate about it. I plan to have no plans. Doing nothing is highly underrated. Try it if you can.