Discipline

Here’s to New Beginnings! Monday morning Red Smoothie with goji berries and strawberries, with a recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good. You can also find it here.

Last week I wrote about my desire to make small changes in life, and one such change is turning Mondays into detox day. This time of year, I usually do a week or two with some severe juice fast, like many of you out there, but I think that perhaps a one-day-a-week detox over a longer period of time will have the same effect. Detox and fasts make me think of discipline, which is one of my most feverishly wished-for characteristics. I have a long complicated history with discipline. There have been times in my life, when I’ve been extremely disciplined, but I pretty much go straight from being highly efficient to out-and-out inertia. It’s quite shocking really, how easily I can abandon all my good work and just veg out in my pajamas. I know that I need a very strong initial trigger to get into that uncompromising discipline mode, and then it’s like with Tarzan, I have to hope another trigger will come along like some liana in the jungle, and rescue me from falling into the hole of stasis.

This can get very tiresome, and is more than enough to want to retire to bed with a box of chocolates.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s got to be some part of me (unknown to the conscious me) that likes who I am and refuses to budge. A part that won’t buy into this discipline stuff for nothing. And this part, I have deduced, is extremely hard to get at and with time gets more and more impossible to bribe into action. Most upsetting and very frustrating.

So. Time for something different. And I believe that’s the key word here. Different. I will trick myself into discipline not by doing what I’ve done in the past; extreme changes, but softer, almost imperceptible ones. Are you following me? If you’re anything like me, this won’t appeal to you at all. In fact, since it’s the first Monday of the New Year, you are probably already going at it to the hilt at the nearest gym. Oh, how I envy you! But alas, I’m in need of something different this time. I’m taking the turtle approach. I will start with these detox Mondays, and gradually include other elements each week. I will incorporate little things along the way, such as reading more poetry, listening to new music, doing some sort of meditation. If we stuff it in quietly here and there, don’t you think these little changes will have a greater effect?