SRP: Final Thoughts (Part 2)

Choice. Balance. Choice. Balance. Choice. Balance.

Each day comprises a zillion different choices. Each choice we make takes us closer to or farther from our goals. Health: physical, mental, spiritual, social, emotional, financial, professional, creative – that is what I’m after. Having list items that address each of these facets of health is a smart way to achieve or at least approach that holy grail, Balance. If I am a gimmicky sucker for having to be so ploddingly deliberate, outsmarting my own weirdo psychology in order to find it, so be it. To me, it is work worth doing, the better alternative to surrendering to other distractions on offer.

For all the jesting I do about being lazy, why is it so much harder to change myself by inaction than action? I see this in my diet and fitness most clearly. I eat too much, so I exercise more (never seems to go vice versa!), and develop a cycle of frenetic intake and output hoping that the physical effort will absolve me of my excesses. Even if these do occasionally “balance” out, it’s hardly Balance, and it certainly isn’t moderation. Better to determine the root of the problem and address that (e.g. eating too much gets fixed by eating less) rather than create additional problems through overzealous prescriptions (e.g. exercising 2x as hard and getting shin splints).

This isn’t exactly breakthrough cognitive behavior science, but it’s so much easier to do than to not do. Ok  no, it’s not easier to run a marathon than to not run a marathon; I think it is easier (maybe just to Americans? Maybe just to me?) to burn off 250 calories than to not eat them in the first place.

Active resolves, efforts to change behavior that require doing, allow us to distract ourselves with charts and hope and effort. To distract ourselves from the inevitable pain of change. When we try to change our behavior by doing less, we either pick up a new distraction to fill the new void or we face the process change with no dilution. Not for the faint of heart, nor the faint of intent. In a world where we can never manage to do enough, it’s hard to imagine that we should just sit by and passively allow the exorcism of excess.

And yet, that is just what the doctor ordered. It is humbling to see how destructive our best efforts can be. Better to get out of the way, dammit, stop the masochistic overthinking and overdoing, and lower the volume.

Breaking down isn’t fun, but it presents an opportunity: to rebuild. When this happens, there are many tools and instruction manuals at our disposal – it is important to discern which will help be stronger than before and which add no value (or worse). The lessons and the tools and the process and the days and each hour and every conversation and all those articles: the ingredients of a life are worth sifting through and learning from. New combinations lead to new insights lead to new tools lead to a better life.

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That’s the WRAP on the Self-Respect Project, folks. I can’t quantify self-respect, so there’s nothing I can point to and say “I improved by this amount!” The whole point was to see if I could pull myself out of the dumps and you know? I think it worked. A month after finishing this project (during which time I’ve been posting here), including long stretches of RAIN, I’m overall functional, productive, and happy. I’m more patient with myself, because I understand myself better. What quiet joy. What a gift to myself, and to people who know me (and therefore have to put up with me.)

Dusting off the self

At the end of April, I returned to Vouvray. On the first night in my new lodgings, I curled into myself in a comfortable bed. Thinking, ruminating, my brain spinning into overdrive over today and tomorrow and ignoring the present entirely. Standard fare.

Tout d’un coup, in that mentally flexible state of magic I now know is called transient hypofrontality, something occurred to me. Do, come along for a ride on my train of thought.

I felt like trash because I had been abusing myself, ça veut dire I was being self-destructive. I hated myself. (By the way, that whole concept itself is an enigma: if I can hate myself, there must be a distinction between “I” and “myself.” Just a morsel to whet the philosophical appetite, for perhaps that is another blog for another day…)

Ok so I saw that self-destruction led to feeling bad (I know, gripping revelation). Ergo, if I wanted to feel better, I should do the opposite: love myself.

But what does it mean to “love” oneself? Apparently not indulging every fleeting impulse, because that’s what I’d been doing and it had left me feeling worthless. I decided it means to treat the self well. Be my own life coach, my own little Christmas elf. I deserve to treat myself well. I respect myself enough to put in the time and effort to treat myself well, to love myself.

Self-respect! EUREKA!

A person who respects herself treats herself well and asserts her worth by so doing. If I wanted to feel better I had to cultivate and nurture my self-respect, which had bottomed out. At last, crystallization of the nebulous problem. Something to work toward deliberately. I would be scientist and subject, I would test my idea and record the results.

And so the Self-Respect Project was born, appropriately on the last night of the bleakest month – though ironically, in the dark.

Lifted from my diary, feverishly written in the middle of the night after this very brainstorm:

“It’s all about SELF RESPECT! Why don’t I respect myself? Because I don’t follow through for myself. And then I get disappointed and begin to feel worthless. So how to respect myself, take care of myself? Follow through for me!”

 (In case you were wondering, the word “self” was used 25 times in the making of this post. Make that 26.)