Today’s big idea is that all you ever have to do to get back into a healthier groove is just to start again. And when i say start again, I mean just pick up whatever you were doing you right before you got sidetracked.
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To be clear, that may make it sound like ‘start again from scratch’
And that is definitely NOT what I’m saying.
Ugh, it’s so exhausting to think you’re starting over from zero that you probably won’t even want to start. So let’s just banish that thought, shall we?
After all, everything you have ever done to take care of yourself is still with you. It may be stored deep in your cells and you may not feel like you can see the evidence, but you still have the muscle memory of whatever it was you were doing before you got off track.
Starting again is just getting back to do what you were previously doing; it’s picking up where you left off.
I’ve got a quick example of starting again
Starting again is one of the main things that a meditation practice teaches us. A lot of people think meditating means not thinking, but not thinking is basically impossible. When you meditate you choose something else to pay attention to, instead of your thoughts; it could be your breath, it could be your body, it could be something external like a candle flame or something you can hear.
And then, whenever you get hooked into paying attention to your thoughts again, you just notice that it’s happened and redirect your attention to whatever you had decided to focus on instead again. Learning to notice when you’ve gotten off track and then strengthen those get started again muscles is just an enormously powerful skill that works just as well in life as it does in meditation.
Daily Tiny Assignment
Your tiny assignment is to think about one or two things that you know work really well for you in terms of helping you feel your best. Maybe it’s getting to bed at a certain time, or eating more of a certain kind of food, or a supplement that works really well for you, or a type of exercise that you love. Just think about one or two of those things. And then, start them again. To whatever extent is easily doable to you right now.
No beating yourself up because you got away from doing them. Just pretend you’re a one year old baby learning to walk and you’ve fallen down. You wouldn’t yank that baby’s arm and say get back to standing, dummy!! Gosh, it felt so harsh to even say that. So please don’t talk to yourself that way, either. Just say, ok, here we go, this is the way we’re headed, you can do it.
Good luck. You’ve got this.
