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I recently finished the book "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin that has been on my "to read" list for a long time, and I enjoyed it. The book is Gretchen's dive into her year long project of happiness and shares her ups and downs, info she discovered in her research etc...
If you missed Part 1 (how dare you!), but here's a quick link back to it.
*Disclaimer - I am not sharing the entire lists, as I don't want to take anything away from anyone who may want to read the book. These are just my favourite points on these lists that jumped out at me.
Secret of Adulthood:
It's easier to keep up, than to catch up
The easiest (though not most helpful in some ways) thing we often is;
The easiest way to be healthy is to not let yourself become unhealthy to begin with.
Point taken.
Ok, that's an obvious one showing that it would easier to lead a healthy lifestyle, when that's just what you've done all along. Certainly. How about we look at another common example I run into often with clients over the years; Rehab / Healing from an injury.
(Some) people do as recommended and follow through with their rehabilitation work to help heal an injury. Then what do they do once they're feeling better? They stop. Sometimes they stop the rehab work (rather than progress it) and quite often that person will stop EVERYTHING (rehab, strength etc).
Yet the easier path to take, is to continue to progress and build upon the rehab to help reduce the risk of another injury. Continue to progress the rehab, build strength, improve / maintain mobility etc...
The common path taken? We wait UNTIL something happens before we act on it. Reactive vs being pro-active. That's a much tougher hill to climb.
Broaden the Spectrum
If I can broaden the spectrum, lets look at health on the whole. We read self-help books, we research possible things we could do to better our health, we hear about it, we see information EVERYWHERE... and many take NO ACTION. We wait until Mother Nature and our amazing human physiology says "Time for a change". Sometimes then STILL no action is taken! In those scenarios, the longer we wait, the more overanalyzing and overthinking we do, the harder it becomes to catch up.
STOP playing catch up. START taking ACTION.
As Gretchen's list reminds us; it makes things easier.
