Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Making Commitment Less Taxing


Most of you have probably already read the HYC Blog Post of the Week. Written by Briy, an American educator in Korea, she uses her teaching gift to explain the importance of consistently making the right choices over time.
(People who have lost a lot of weight) had to make a million correct decisions to get there. Day after day, they forced themselves onto the treadmill or into the gym. Meal after meal, they turned down the extra helping, threw away the chocolate. And each step, each decision, was so relatively unimportant. Passing on the dessert just once has almost no effect. But passing on that same dessert 20 days out of 30 in a month... how many pounds could that be? Like today, I went to the gym and jogged/walked faithfully on the treadmill for 30 minutes, for a total of about 275 calories burned. But that's a drop in the hat. I have to do that same thing six times a week, and eat on-plan, to succeed in losing the week's allotted 1-2 pounds. Then repeat that, all the while upping the intensity, 49 times to lose 100 pounds. That's why each step is so "halting and painful" - because it is so small.
On her vision board, Briy observes that developing discipline in one area of our lives often spills over into another area. Am I the ONLY one in this bunch who waited until the last minute to file a tax return?? Talk about self-induced STRESS!

DH is a left-brained salaried employee who ordinarily filed his taxes the day after his W-2's arrived...until we got married. I, on the other hand, am a right-brained self employed freelancer who, although diligent about keeping accurate records, has in the past, procrastinated compiling the records for our CPA. Why? Who knows.

So, Miss Briy, thanks for helping me see that the same principles we use to help loose weight - small steps, small decisions, made consistently over time - will also help prevent last night's scenario in our household from ever happening again.

Today, I will begin keeping my records up-to-date each week. And I will not begin next week's work until that task is completed.

But now, I'm off to my first GOLF lesson!!

3 comments:

Cammy@TippyToeDiet said...

It's amazing how these lessons repeat themselves in other aspects of our lives, isn't it?

I'm proud to report that this year I had my return filed EARLY. I'm so glad because the 15th kind of snuck in here. :)

Hanlie said...

Nice post! I need to renew my drivers licence before May 17! I may as well do it now...

Unknown said...

You lost 5 pounds (I know I'm behind a little) - WOW!! Oh my gosh I am soooooo happy for you! See all that hardwork finally paid off. You are so right that every meal, every trip to the gym, every shopping excursion has to stand on it's own but at the same time it all weaves so delicately into the pattern that is our lives. Somewhere - can't remember where - but somewhere I saw this saying "Today's results are the created by yesterday's decisions".......thought that was very interesting!

Just remember we can TRAIN our brains to think a certain way - we DO control how we react and handle things. I too am disorganized and get frazzled easy but I'm working on it.....I've made some strides but have a long way to go to get where I want to be. I think I'm going to buy that book called "Does this clutter make my butt look big?".