That Flat Stomach

I have a confession to make: when I was eighteen and had my first real boyfriend, I was obsessed with having a flat stomach. I am 5’2” and weighed at the time 48 kilograms, which is equivalent to 108 pounds. I was not even close to being fat, but, I had a rounded stomach. Oh, how I hated that stomach! Every night I did one hundred sit ups, full ones, with my feet under the bed frame. I am sure my posture must have improved, but there was no change in the roundness of my stomach.

As a lifelong member of the Society of Wimps and Geeks, I never liked exercise. In elementary school I used to hide under my desk in a pathetic and (as you probably guessed) unsuccessful attempt to skip PE class. As an adult, I discovered a better way to embrace the necessity to exercise (at least in order to leave my stomach round rather than rounder). I told myself that exercise allows me to eat whatever I want. In went the chocolates, the cakes, ravioli, gnocchi, and pizza, and though I never got much bigger than, say, 122 pounds, my tummy never got flatter.

Then came the big revelation. Rock climbers belong to the Society of Wimps and Geeks! Not as Wimps, of course. They qualify for their innate Geekiness. Longing for a break in my fortunes as well as for some adventure (about which I had so far only read in books), I applied to enter that holly order and was accepted, though retaining my Wimpishness. And my round stomach.

Sitting on the summit of Mt. Conness, Yosemite

Having joined the holly order of climbers, I suddenly had a new exercising goal. Now I wanted stamina, leg power, and upper body strength, though you may be sure I still cared how far my stomach flopped over the climbing harness. Exercising changed its name to training. I was training to climb. And climb I did: Rainier, Shasta, Olympus, and some rock climbing routes that I would never have imagined myself on or near. But underneath it all, and certainly beneath the harness, I still worried (in present tense too) about the flatness of my stomach.

Setting the goal to be healthy and strong, says Kelly McGonigal in her book The Will Power Instinct, is a much better and more pertinent motivator than using food as a reward. Say, for example, when my favorite chocolate and nuts bar calls to me with its sweet promise, I can remember my goal of being healthy and strong and decide whether that bar, tempting though it is, would support my goal (answer: no, and no buts).

I want to be healthy and strong. I want to exercise because it supports my goals, and I want to accept and love my stomach no matter how round.  And every once in a while I want to eat that chocolate bar, because, to tell the truth, it too supports one of my goals: the one about living life to the fullest and having fun!

Minimizing My Goals

So here I am, sitting in front of my computer, not two days after writing my blog about letting go of ambition, and what do you think my brain does if not invent new ambitions and goals. The newest goal: write a first draft of my romance novel, letting it flow out. Seems simple, no? But in my brain, a conversation goes on between my different parts, putting a stop to any writing attempt.

The enthusiastic part: “Let’s go! Come on! Let’s write! You’re at over 19,000 words! You can do this! We can finish a first draft!

The “I don’t want you to be disappointed” part: “Wait a second. Let’s not get all over-excited here. Don’t you remember what happened last time? We wrote a first draft, and then we felt overwhelmed. We felt out of control, like we have no idea what was going on in the novel and like we have no idea how to even start to revise.”

The critic: In order to avoid that, you need to write really well the first time. Make it perfect right off the bat. Just really delve into the scenes, think what the characters are thinking, see what they see, make every word count.”

The enthusiastic part: "No, stop stopping me! Just write! Let it flow! We can do it! It’s going to be great! It’ll be fabulous to have a first draft! We’ll revise later. Let’s go, write now!”

The “I don’t want you to be disappointed” part: “You’re rushing and you’ll regret it. Don’t just write. You’ll hate it later and become discouraged. Take it slowly, or even better, let it be. You don’t need to write today. Write tomorrow or the day after, when you’re in a better mood. Write when you’re in your groove. Not now with all this chaos.”

The critic: “That’s the lazy way out. You never get in your groove. You have to write now but write your best work only.”

And so on and so on. They argue with each other louder and louder in my head until I want to scream: “What do you want from me? Let me be. I’m not going to write today!”

But perhaps there is another way. Perhaps a new goal, a smaller, unambitious, calmer goal: I’d like to write today and enjoy it. I’d like to feel like I got sucked into the story for just a little while, even five minutes. I’d like to write and feel the magic of writing without time limits or word counts, and without thinking of the end result, free of expectations and rules.

Can we do it, my parts? Can you step back for just a little while this morning and allow me to have fun? Tomorrow, if you like, we can have the same conversation again, or maybe, if you see that my new goal was a success, we can forgo our usual process of judgement, over-excitement and fear and cooperate: the enthusiastic part can make my ideas flow, the cautious part can make me think, and the critic can keep me organized.

Priorities Rock!

My brother-in-law once told me about a demonstration done by a time-management expert. The expert filled a large jar with rocks and asked, “Is the jar full?” “Yes,” the group replied. The expert took out a bag of gravel and poured it into the jar. “Is the jar full now?” he asked. “Maybe not,” the group thought. The expert took out a bag of sand and poured it into the jar. “What about now?” he asked. “No?” the group wondered. The expert took a jug of water and poured it into the jar. Now it was full.

The point of this demonstration is that we need to put the big rocks, our greatest priorities, in the jar first, otherwise they might not fit. But which of my to-do list items are rocks, gravel, sand or water? Chores, for example -- are chores sand or water? Hanging out with friends -- is that rock or gravel? Some of my activities are easier to identify: spending time with the kids or writing are rocks. But others are confusing. I care about my family eating healthy, homemade, organic food, but I would rate cooking lower down than reading the children a book.

Sometimes the sand and water, my chores, weigh on me so much that I cannot get the big rocks done. Scheduling doctor and dentist appointments, paying bills, and grocery shopping might be less important, but postponing them can irritate me enough that my mind, instead of concentrating on writing, will obsess on what still needs to get done.

So what are my priorities? The children, writing, exercising, hiking, my family and friends, eating healthy. But there are many activities which I would love to do and have given up on: singing, drawing, walking the dogs. Isn’t that too many rocks in one jar? This jar metaphor is stressing me out! Perhaps it is not meant to be used on a daily basis but more as a big picture kind of ideal: the jar being life and the big rocks my goals?

A coach once told me to make a plan and write down where I’d like to see myself tomorrow, next month, in a year, and in five years. Perhaps, to continue the jar and rocks metaphor, each of these time goals ought to have a jar of its own, with an appropriate size. Expecting myself to be published tomorrow is probably unreasonable, but setting small goals like writing a blog, revising my novel for an hour, reading a book, talking on the phone with the kids -- those are manageable rocks which I can fit in.

In my five-year jar so much more can fit! More books to write and to read, more hopes and dreams for the kids, places to travel to, empty canvases to fill. And even more in the jar of life, where each day is no more than a grain of sand, and the rocks are the big goals of life: self fulfillment, parenthood, love.

What do you do to find time for what’s most important to you?