I could not imagine a world in which I was not....

Chronically Busy

A smoker

A drinker

Struggling

Chasing

An eater of 28 meals a week

A resident of the Uk

A evening Tv watcher

I’m sure there are more.

I couldn’t imagine not doing those things, but it’s more than just doing them.

They were outpourings of who I am or even facts of the world

I can’t stress this detail enough. I literally saw them as like limbs. Extensions of myself.

It was only perhaps in fleeting moments when I didn’t...

when I allowed myself glances at the destruction they were causing and would cause in my life,

(Note: I don’t mean to imply these behaviours are bad merely that I needed to change them for me)

before rapidly turning to my ever strengthening counter story...

I’m different...

I balance it out with...

Life is boring without it...

When I have time...

In a few years...

I’m not as bad as...

Sleep when I’m dead or some other nihilistic quote from Fight Club...

You know the drill.

Largely because of this, I thought change was impossible.

If I had to believe in order to achieve I was screwed.

I couldn’t even imagine let alone believe.

Then I realised I didn’t need to believe, not in the final result anyway.

I just needed to shrink my world to what I already knew.

Ok so I couldn’t imagine myself swimming,

I knew I could get in the water.

After that its, then what?

Can I flap my arms a bit?

Great

Then what?

It sounds so simple and really, it is.

What stops us is the idea that it should be hard and effortful and require motivation when in truth the presence of those things just means that we’ve stacked the deck against ourselves.

When its your game you get to stack the deck to win.

You just have to keep coming back to the table.

And it’s not “eat the elephant one bite at a time” it’s not that.

It’s that each time you do what you said you’d do you’re changed for having done it.

You literally no longer see the way you did, you have different beliefs about yourself and the world and about the sort of life that’s possible for you.

That’s really cool.