Re: Program (Coined by #SakaraLife)

Right now there's a helicopter whirling outside my neighborhood looking for someone on the loose who dumped their car in the Walgreens parking lot and ran. I just finished 3 weeks on the Sakara Life vegan eats program. I did it imperfectly, and that's ok.

For the first week, I followed it, had boosts of energy, felt great, and lost 14 pounds. Yes. In one week. 

On the weekend (when they don't deliver food) I "indulged" in all the favorites, and I think that made it all the harder to "get back on the wagon" in Weeks 2 and 3, which found my cravings had returned (especially for salty crunchie things like Popcorn, my nemesis!) 

After I finished the 3-week program, I paid for another 3 weeks, and here I am at the end of the "4th" week and again, am imperfect. 

Last night, after a whirlwind of rage-texts from my sister, I couldn't sleep. I stayed up late, slept poorly, and woke feeling terrible. Reviewing the text messages back and forth, I saw the words of someone full of FEAR (me). 

I'm sharing this because - well - it's my birthday next week. I'm turning . . . 49. I was talking to my sweetheart and sharing all of this with him and said, "none of my dreams have come true. I'm not directing plays or films, I'm not working at a theater, I haven't published a book yet." Yes, I have so many other accomplishments -- a PhD, a good job, good friends, a family, a big heart -- and yet the thing that is the chains around my body is -- ME. Me stopping me. Me sabotaging me. 

Why do we self-sabotage? When do we tell ourselves to let go of our dreams (or better yet, when do we just stop working on them? I don't know. But somewhere there in my 30's when everyone in my family was getting cancer and dying, I sort of lost touch with the dreams and through myself into problem-solving and over-working in order to fulfill some sort of perfection complex.

Last night I had an a-ha moment that no matter how much I accomplish, no matter how hard I work, there will always be haters in the world -- and sometimes those haters include my own family.

So will my respond be to just slip into another 15 years of living in reaction mode, or will I choose to step into this last year before a new "decade" and make a change?

And yet, even as I say that, the voice in my head says "oh, KO, how much time you've wasted. You're too old to do anything about all of that now." 

But there is a voice -- a tiny whisper of a voice that lives just a little bit deeper inside me that says "Fuck that. You can do whatever you set your mind to. Hard work. Stop whining. Do it now." 

I think we live in a culture that asks people to give up instead of persist when things get hard and tough. When I was listening to N. tell me all the excuses for why she couldn't change her life, I was like "WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?! SO SAD" and yet, here I have been doing the same thing -- settling for "good enough."  I don't want to do that anymore.

Today I got up at 6am and worked on a couple of email blasts and my website, and now I'm writing tis missive out into the world. It is totally possible for me to do what I want to do. The questions are: 1 - what do I want to do? and 2 - what am I willing to do to get there?

If those were easy to answer, we'd all be blissfully happy living our best most authentic lives and not caring a shit about what others think.

As Mary Oliver says, 
"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

And as David Goggins says:
​"Roger that."