He’s about the same age as me… I can probably run faster than him… I’m sure I have a lower body fat percentage. These are my series of thoughts as I convince myself to stop doing push ups. The burn has only begun, and I’ve quit. Why?
She only has one kid… And she is still clearly, so disorganized… How can she live like that?… I’m glad I am at least a little more organized than her, and I have two kids to manage. These are my thoughts as I attempt to persuade myself that I am organized enough, and that I should just ignore the blatant holes in my organizational system. Why?
I’m healthier than just about anyone I can see in this place… I bet none of them are ready to run a marathon right now… I can guarantee more than half of these people eat here every single night… Even if I have 10 orders from here, I’ll still be in so much better health than this crowd… This is my thinking, as I convince myself to eat fried cheese balls. (don’t worry I didn’t order them and this was not anytime recently. I was eating the leftovers in the fryer basket, as I had a job flipping burgers at a bar back in 2009.) Why?
The answer is the same for each of the scenarios…
I dropped my standards and measured myself against others.
It doesn’t matter if everything I thought was true. In fact, it’s even more dangerous when it is, because then I am even more liable to believe the story line. Every single time, every single damn time, I felt miserable after giving in to my surroundings. I knew deep down that it never mattered what the no-named strangers around me were doing, or what they saw me doing, or what they thought of what I was doing.
What truly mattered was if I could look myself in the mirror and know that I did my best to live up to my values.
It doesn’t matter if we don’t do the things that weren’t possible, what matters is when we don’t do the things that were possible.
