When I began this project, I was full of tiger blood. I was 10 days into a Whole30 challenge, and felt energy like I'd never known before. I wanted to keep it going, keep up the feeling, keep challenging myself to change, improve, feel better.
It's a few month later now, and I don't feel particularly better. I feel kinda crappy, TBH.
The Whole30 was pretty successful. I didn't make it a full 30 days, but I did drastically change my eating habits for over 3 weeks, and I experienced hugely beneficial changes to my body & my mental state.
The next month, I did yoga every day, with very few exceptions. Sometimes it sucked, but for the most part, I was really happy with the results.
December, I faltered. Instead of one big exciting goal, I gave myself little things to change. And some of them I actually did! I'm still not using a towel to dry my hair, and I'm seeing the breakage around my hairline slow down. I'm also no longer washing my face in the shower, and my skin looks perhaps a bit clearer. So, it wasn't a wasted month. But it FELT wasted. After two months of being healthier & happier, jumping into December, the stress of the holidays, the money spent, the ugly consumerism, and missing Andrew sorely during our two and a half week separation, the little things I was doing to improve my appearance felt silly, small and woefully unable to handle the talk of improving myself.
And there it is. A big problem in the middle of these big challenges. I don't want to just improve my health, or my appearance, or any small part of me. I want to improve my SELF. The stuff that makes up "me"-- well, I've examined it and found it lacking. And I'm trying to tweak it, through challenges, to improve upon it. To make it worthy of love, of a wedding, of a happily ever after.
But... what if I'm already worthy of that? What if I don't need to change myself in order to like myself? Or, what if I do need to change one thing, and that's the way I treat myself. The way I look at myself and judge myself. Accepting myself for who I am, and treating myself with love might be the biggest challenge of all.
But I think it's a pretty good one.
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