"I'll Do It Later"

I know, I know. Queue the eye roll. Just another person telling you to be disciplined and do the thing you want to do. But bear with me, because I want to talk about why it matters and why the process is so messy. I say this for myself just as much as anyone else.

Last night, I found myself desperately needing a cozy space. It had been an extremely stressful week and my nervous system was asking for rest. So I aggressively tuned into my newspaper subscription, the Sunday Club, which in case you are curious, is all games and zero news. And listen, I am not sponsored. They do not know me at all, but I know them, and I know I can return to it and mindlessly play games that are actually doing something good for my brain. In a world that is constantly flooding us with heavy and overwhelming news, giving your nervous system a break is not laziness. It is necessary. We will not be much help to anyone, including ourselves, if our nervous system is completely shot.

So I ate, I played my games, I unwound. Then a thought came up... "You should walk on the treadmill. Your sugar levels are high."

I often feel high blood sugar in my body because it can feel a lot like anxiety, which is exactly why learning to listen to your body is so important. If you want to read more about that, check out my blog post on somatic therapy.

But back to the treadmill. My immediate response to that thought? "Well, I can do it after I eat a grapefruit."

I ate the grapefruit. I did not walk.

Here is the thing I really sat with after that. Every single time we do this, and it is so easy and so unintentional, our body registers it. We release stress hormones. Our brain learns from experience. And what it is learning is that our "expectations are too high", that we cannot do the thing we want to do. Our neural networks are literally shifting and changing with each of these moments, quietly reinforcing the story that we are someone who does not follow through. I know that sounds heavy, but it is the reality of how our brains work.

This morning the same thought came back. Go walk on the treadmill.

And right on cue, my brain offered me an easier option. Maybe just sit and play your newspaper games for a few more minutes. And then, almost immediately, came the list. You have to put on your shoes. You have to pull out the treadmill. You have to let the dogs out first. All of these "reasons" were stacking up before I had even moved an inch.

And then I started answering back.

You have to put on your shoes. So what.

You have to pull out the treadmill. So what.

You have to let the dogs out first. So what.

And then it hit me. Do you know what I had to do to eat that grapefruit the night before? Get it out of the fridge. Cut it. Do the whole thing I do where I carefully cut around every single little triangle. Add a little sugar on top. Get a spoon. There were actually more steps to eating the grapefruit than there were to just getting on the treadmill. And yet somehow my brain had convinced me the treadmill was the harder choice.

That is how sneaky this gets.

So I got up from my dining room chair, slumped myself onto the treadmill, and started editing blog posts.

And something shifted. My brain got to learn something different this time. It learned that I can meet my own expectations. That I can respect myself. That doing the thing you want to do is rarely as hard as it seems in the moment before doing it.

Did I get to play my newspaper games? No. But I listened to my body. And because of that, I will likely be more present throughout the day, with my clients and with myself.

I am not sharing this to say we should be perfect or that we should always be doing all the things we want to do all the time. What I am saying is that it matters to notice when we are getting in our own way, because that cycle quietly erodes our trust in ourselves. Every time we do not do the thing we want to do, we reinforce the belief that we cannot. And over time, that belief becomes the loudest voice in the room.

So instead of constantly falling short of our own expectations, what if we leaned into self-respect instead?

One small example of that for me lately has been my morning journaling routine. It grounds me. It anchors me. Every single morning, I sit by my back door, listen to the birds, and write. This is new for me. I was not always someone who woke up early and carved out that kind of time for herself. But I do it now, for self-preservation. To make sure that my phone, my stress, my to-do list, and the weight of the day do not get to me before I get to myself.

So I will step off my soapbox now. But I wanted to share this one small moment, one blip, where I did the thing my body needed, and my brain got to learn something new - that I do not always fail. That I do not always fall short of taking care of myself or showing up for myself.

Last night, the grapefruit won.

But today? Today I won. At least today.

Cheers to negotiating with ourselves a little less. Not bargaining over when or how or how many steps it is going to take. Just doing the thing we want to do. Pushing through the list of excuses our brain so kindly offers us and doing it anyway.

Wish me luck and I'll wish you luck!

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