If You Want to Change the World Start Off with Making Your Bed

Have you ever noticed that when we feel low thinking about all that’s coming in the New Year it can be overwhelming? But, when you look at the future with new eyes it feels so differently? Like it’s possible to rise above the storm and achieve your dreams? So true, but you need to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Let me tell you my story. It has it highs and lows but it adds up to one thing—how do I move from low to high and stay there long enough to achieve my goals for 2020. For me, it has always been about having the supports in place—friends, books, youtube motivators, Bible and good family who support you and move you forward to your next objectives in life.

One of my greatest motivators on youtube is Admiral Bill McRaven. He is a 37 year Navy veteran who has seen a lot of ups and downs and has this to say about life.

“If you want to change the world start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning you would have accomplished your first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day you will come home to a bed made. That you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

One of my biggest challenges in life has been my physical weight. I have tried many ideas and few have been successful. I successfully lost weight at times over the years but fell back into old ways or life got in the way, and became more discouraged by returning to the point I did not want to at—my old weight. Yet, each year, I try again. I hope again. I resolve to move forward toward the mark of the calling, I have in my heart, to achieve my goal and to maintain it. 2020 is no different.

I am six-seven years old as of this writing and I refuse to give up. But, I have lessons I have learned along this journey. Ones I would like to share with you.

One, that my weight doesn’t define the good person I am. That I have an image that is healthy and my body is a part of that image not “all of that image.” That it was a learned thing to behave as I do and I can change it by relearning new behaviours that bring peace and joy to my life. That neither weight or behaviour defines the good person inside me. That I define it through the caring I show others as well as myself.

Two, that I can be who I want to become as I practice letting go thinking that brings me down and speak to myself about the good things I am and the good things I will achieve this new year.

Third, I take the steps necessary to begin the journey towards those goals. I told a friend recently, you can’t reach point D if you first don’t begin at point A. You have to start in order to finish. And we know, we truly never finish in learning and growing in life—that is, if you are a life long learner, which I know I am. I hope you feel the same way. Call yourself what you are “a life long learner” because no matter how old you are chronologically, you are as young as you think you are.

I had a nutritionist come and talk to me about my health and where I was in age and she found that I was 50 years old in physical age when actually I was sixty-five years. Which of these is the greater fact? Today, am I sixty-seven or fifty-two? It depends on my thinking and my believing.

Would the real facts please stand up?

There are new studies out about our emotional quotient rather than just intelligence quotient. Perhaps, we should start a physical quotient. What is my physical IQ? We could create a whole new approach to where I am physically, and what steps do I have to take to reach a higher PIQ (physical intelligence quotient)? Taking this approach, eating it in small bites, to eventually achieve consuming the entire elephant of weight loss is a reality worth pursuing. The sky’s the limit!

Please feel free to share with us some new approaches you have that will help all of us along your journey in life.

Love to hear from you, Xenia