There seems to be a conspiracy afoot to keep me from my goals of losing weight, painting my sketched concepts, and writing a book.<\/p>\n
Just in the last four months, my brain blew up<\/a>. My shoulder<\/a> froze. Big projects at the cabin<\/a> need supervision. I signed up with an unhelpful self-publishing program<\/a>. And now the basement is a disaster area<\/a>.<\/p>\n Any one of those is plenty of an excuse to leave my goals for another, easier time.<\/p>\n My friends joked that the reason I recovered so well from the brain aneurysm rupture is that I’m stubborn. It’s absolutely true. Sometimes I think my ancestors were not German, but mules.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, stubbornness isn’t the same quality as stick-to-it-iveness.<\/p>\n You might say this should be called perseverance, but what I’m thinking of has a shade of meaning that is more accurately called just “sticking to it”.<\/p>\n Perseverance has the tone of “against all odds,” and “overcoming obstacles.” I do have perseverance when I face clear obstacles. Perseverance was one of the ingredients that help me to lead creation of\u00a0news agencies in Afghanistan<\/a> and Pakistan<\/a>. But that’s not what I’m talking about.<\/p>\n What I need is stick-to-it-iveness. It’s something different – to just STICK TO IT when the task is dull, repetitive, and ordinary – and when the only obstacle is your own willpower.<\/p>\n Staying healthy means eating healthy food in reasonable portions, exercising, getting enough sleep, meditating. These are daily routines. They reap obvious benefits. There is no real reason I cannot do them every day.<\/p>\n I’m not in prison, I am in charge of my own\u00a0grocery shopping and cooking, my work schedule is almost entirely up to me, I have membership in a great Fitness Center that’s just eight minutes away, and I can walk out my backyard to connect with miles of great hiking trails.<\/p>\n Yet I have found multiple excuses, even on easy\u00a0days, to miss one or more of these. What is that, but lack of stick-to-it-iveness?<\/p>\n Same with painting, same with writing. My time is my own. I absolutely can control whether I sit down and work on my book and paint my concepts every day. But so often, I haven’t.<\/p>\n This weekend I read a book called “Never Binge Again<\/a>.” It’s written by Glenn Livingston, a psychologist, who takes a funny yet practical approach to stop overeating. He offers a technique that helps you to isolate that overeating part of yourself – and crush it.<\/p>\n His method is entertaining and makes sense. I have been using it for two days, and it seems to help. Even last night, in the face of the latest catastrophe, I didn’t drink or binge.<\/p>\n The core point is stick-to-it-iveness. All you have to do in order to never binge again, he points out, is to Never Binge Again.<\/p>\n Sounds simplistic? Maybe. But in the end, it really is that simple. Everything else is excuses.<\/p>\n It’s like when you really and truly quit smoking<\/a>. When you are done, you’re done. You don’t keep picking up a cigarette butt and having a few puffs. You stop. That’s it. All you have to do to quit smoking is to never smoke again.<\/p>\n The things that seem to conspire against me do not matter. There’s no conspiracy. I’m not helpless.<\/p>\n All I have to do is eat healthy and exercise and meditate and sleep. And paint my concepts. And write a book.<\/p>\n I can do all those. I just need to stick to it.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2015, the year when Never Binge Again was published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There seems to be a conspiracy afoot to keep me from my goals of losing weight, painting my sketched concepts, and writing a book. Just in the last four months, my brain blew up. My shoulder froze. Big projects at the cabin need supervision. I signed up with an unhelpful self-publishing program. And now the … read more Sticking to it<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,770,661,622,518,769,160,772,515,771,259],"class_list":["post-7162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pennies","tag-67","tag-discipline","tag-eating","tag-exercise","tag-habits","tag-overeating","tag-painting","tag-perseverance","tag-smoking","tag-willpower","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7162"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7171,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7162\/revisions\/7171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}