The Mind is not a Bucket

I see this mistake so often that I figured it was finally time to write about it.

Someone has started trying to eat better and exercise more. They're off to a good start, cutting back on the junk food, getting some workouts in. Everything's looking up.

But about 10 days in things get tricky. The body feels tired and weak. The cravings get stronger. And an insidious thought pattern starts to assert itself. It goes something like this:

"I've been working so hard, my body really deserves a break so it can rest and recharge."

or

"I've been so good about my food choices, I need to let off a little steam and have something 'naughty'.

At the root of these thoughts is a philosophical conceit that is rarely examined. These are all based on the idea that the mind/body is a bucket that gets filled and needs to be emptied in order to be filled again.

Let me explain.

In the first example, the person feels that they have been "filled up" with exercise, and needs to take a few days off so that they can come back stronger.

In the second, the mind is seen to be filled up with saying no to temptations, and saying yes just once will drain the bucket and allow the psyche to start fresh.

These are all very nice ideas that have the unfortunate quality of being completely wrong. Your mind is not at all like a bucket.

Your body and mind are organic, and they behave like every other organic thing in nature, they work in cycles, rhythms, and patterns.

When you're trying to change your dietary and lifestyle choices, you're really changing your patterns. And for a new pattern to really take hold and become your pattern you have to keep repeating it until it becomes ingrained in your psyche. This is why it's so important, especially at first, to not compromise your new healthy choices. Not even once!

What feels like an urge to empty the bucket is actually your old pattern struggling to maintain its grip. Acquiescing to that will only confuse the body and mind. Instead of making progress you'll be spinning your wheels and wondering why you can never lose that last 15 pounds or gain that tone in your midsection.

So let's say you have a pattern of decompressing after work with a few beers. You've established this pattern over many months, if not years. When the end of work rolls around, your body and brain start setting up to receive that cold dose of calories and alcohol. You've decided it would be a better idea to replace that after work beer with an iced tea and some fruit. The first week you do this your mind will be an active participant, and it will be strong enough to stick to the new plan. But the body will continue to hit all the triggers for "beer after work" relentlessly for at least two or three weeks, and the mind's willpower inevitably slackens. You start to get that "just one to drain the bucket of craving" feeling.

Now, if you go for the beer on one of these days, you've sent the body the message that the week of iced tea was an aberration, now over, and the old familiar pattern can continue. You'll find it very difficult to go back to your iced tea routine. The mind will have to get its gears moving all over again just as it did in the beginning of the exercise. The time between "emptying your bucket" will get shorter and shorter and within a few weeks you'll be back to the daily beer pattern.

This is very ineffective, frustrating and confusing to the body, and fills you with an unpleasant guilt that will turn even your favorite beer into a bitter pill.

A much more successful method is to lay out a long term plan for establishing new patterns and not deviating from that until your body has accepted the new world order. In other words, cold turkey.

This is where it's very helpful to set one month challenges for yourself. For example, "I will not drink a single beer in the month of June." A month is enough time to give your body a good chance of rinsing the old pattern out of its system. When you feel your mind start to wriggle around the rule, making excuses about it being a "special occasion" or the need to "blow off steam" or "de-stress" know that this is the pattern trying to reassert itself. Smile at it and let it pass. After all, your mind is not a bucket. It's a harmonic wave pattern.

You'll know you've successfully laid down a new pattern when the old one doesn't even occur to you. So in our beer example, if you're getting home and not even thinking of having a cold one, you're free! If however, you're having an internal fight "I'd love a beer, but I'm going to have the iced tea because I know it's better for me," then you're still in the middle of your battle. Persevere.

Some patterns take longer than others to change, but for food and exercise, a month is usually enough to get you on the right track. The next time the first of the month rolls around, give yourself a target and stick with it through the whole 30 days. And once you've done this a few times, you'll start getting really good at seeing through all the tricks the mind plays as it tries to continue its patterns. Then you'll be ready for bigger and bigger challenges.

But above all, don't fool yourself into thinking that skipping just one workout or indulging in just one of your junk foods will somehow make things easier. In fact it will only make the road longer, steeper, and more exasperating. And it's a long tough road to begin with...

But stay on it and you'll get there!