Believe and You Will Be
For the past few years, I’ve been on a path of cliche self-discovery and realization. I’ve consciously spent hours each day thinking about the kind of person I am, how I portray myself and the impact I’m creating. This includes constantly monitoring my thoughts and actually pushing myself to think less negatively and promote positive thinking, even if I don’t truly believe what I’m thinking. If that makes sense.
The funny thing is, that within two weeks, you can actually get used to almost anything. I got used to drinking apple cider vinegar every morning and now don’t even taste how bad it is. I got used to waking up at 7.30am every day and now get to wake my boyfriend up at that time on Sundays which he does not enjoy. The interesting point here is that if you want to make a change in your life, you just need to do it, whether you believe in it or not.
In a way you have to almost not let your instincts and emotions rule you, and force yourself to do things you may not want to. It’s like when we were kids, we had to do all kinds of things we hated but we managed to do them. That’s how I feel about myself today. I’m nowhere near where I want to be physically or mentally so I’m just going to do things that I think will move me in that direction. Whether I want to or not is not the point. Now when I find myself complaining, I kind of lie. Rather than saying work is pretty boring, I’ll try to say, I’m so glad I’m very busy these days (avoiding the topic of the matter of this work). For me, it’s been these small changes that have kind of tricked my mind and body into becoming what I want. You can’t let emotions get in the way of making decisions that are objectively good for you.
I’m sure some people may feel that moving away from your natural impulses isn’t a good idea but are we even fully in control of our impulses? Every thought and action of ours is a product of so many things so what we truly want often gets drowned out by nurture and socialization. I really believe in human agency and I think that if you really want to do something like quit smoking or start eating better, all you have to do is start. Don’t give yourself a choice. I know this is simplifying a lot of things in life quite drastically but I think you have to start somewhere. Like maybe start with eating one extra portion of greens in a day, and then move on to the bigger life issues.
So now, if we have the ability to be better, why not force it a little?
