⏳ TREE 746: You have time

I’m writing about moving from harmful to helpful behaviour this week.

Monday: Honesty with trajectory
Tuesday: Have-to vs get-to
Wednesday: Rules
Today: You have time

Yesterday, Denelle commented that rules are not for her. I’m glad she said that because humans work in many different way. If you are not a rules person, trying to do rules like me would be miserable. The same goes for today’s post. Easing in and out of things works well for me. I don’t have a huge amount of willpower, and I don’t have an addictive personality, so slow, low-effort change fits the way I function. You may be completely different.

I took several years to quit social media. (By quit, I don’t mean that I don’t have social media accounts. I have accounts on every platform, just in case. I mean that I no longer have any interest in consuming or creating social media beyond maybe 30 minutes per week.) I did it through

• social media fasts, sometimes public, sometimes private

• simple rules, e.g. no phone in the bathroom

• cultivating consuming habits I preferred, mainly books

I never shoulded myself into quitting. I slowly steered myself in a direction that I preferred.

I’ve been working on getting my body to look the way I want it to for at least a decade. I’m closer than I’ve been since I was doing karate in mid 00s. I’ve slowly tweaked my desires and tastes to the point where what I want and what my body needs are nearly the same. Tuesday night, I was genuinely excited to buy a courgette for Wednesday’s lunch (roasted with onion, bell pepper and spices, then wrapped in a tortilla with humous, and fresh salsa.) Wednesday morning, I was happy to set out into the wind and cold rain for my run.

It took me a decade to get this weird.

I did it the same way I quit social media.

With most of life, you have plenty of time to make the changes you want to make, provided you start now and keep plugging away consistently. Who cares if it takes you three years or a decade to quit the bad habit, learn the new skill, lose the weight? The point is that you get there. Going slowly leaves room to have fun along the way.

What specific, small, easy but meaningful change can you make today?

Tomorrow: Skyler has the perfect story to finish the week .

Grow slowly
Jeff