A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Yesterday, I was browsing the bookstore -- a real one, not an online one -- not looking for anything in particular -- which is one way I love to spend a overcast day. I could spend hours picking up a book (obviously, one with an eye catching cover) reading the inside flap and putting it back down.

One that caught my eye was A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. The excerpt from the flap talked about how much of his life he doesn't remember. All of the activities done on autopilot. The mindlessness of it (my interpretation).

After I got home, I googled the book and found Don's blog with part of chapter 25 at the top of the page. Below is part of that excerpt (an excerpt of an excerpt, if you will):

"It’s like this when you live a story. The first part happens fast. You throw yourself into the narrative and you’re caught in the water, the shore is pushing back behind you and the trees are getting smaller. The other shore is inches away and you can feel the resolution coming, the feeling of getting out of you’re boat and walking the distant shore, looking back to see where you came from. The first part of a story happens fast, and you think the thing is going to be over soon. But it isn’t going to be over soon. The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. It’s as though the thing is teaching you the story is not about the ending but about the story itself, about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle. The shore behind you stops getting smaller, and you paddle and wonder why the same strokes used to move you but they don’t anymore....

I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought and they can’t see the distant shore anymore and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their wife, on their husband, they go looking for an easier story....

The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn’t think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it’s conflict that changes a person."

It is just another voice out there that puts forth the idea that life is in the journey. In weight loss terms, it is not about the end point of hitting your goal weight -- it is about the small changes you make to your life.

If the extra weight you are carrying around today makes life more difficult for you (mentally, emotionally, physically), it seems to me you would want to make sure you NEVER get into that position again! Take your time. Learn about yourself. You got to where you are for reasons.

If you eat emotionally -- there is a reason (or more likely reasons) for it. WHY do you do what you do? That coping strategy has worked in the past -- what has changed that it is not working for you now? Any halfway decent friend will tell you it is very hard to give up one coping mechanism if you don't have some other coping mechanism to replace it -- right then -- not AFTER the weight has come off. That is why diets work for the time that they work -- you are given a new set up coping mechanisms.

But ultimately, you go back to your old ways of coping (because you didn't learn anything that serves you long term -- you weren't even looking for something to serve you long term. You just wanted the weight off -- and there it went (with much hard work and decision making on your part). But when your "off" the diet, then what???

Back to the excerpt -- if you have a reasonable amount of weight to lose -- it might feel like you start off strong and you can see the progress you make (as you are paddling away from shore, so to speak) but when you get in the middle of the channel of your weight loss, it becomes harder and harder to keep paddling. The shore (your goal weight) doesn't feel like it is coming any closer -- it will take forever to get there --

It is at this point, I will ask you to keep in mind:

What are you options?

To quit paddling? To stop trying to lose weight? To settle for being dissatisfied because you don't think you can do it?

YOU CAN! But like all things worth having -- it comes one paddle stroke at a time. One eating decision at a time. Finding the small positives everyday (yeh! I passed up that tray of cookies, not because I told myself I couldn't have them, but because I noticed that they didn't even look that good!!!) and celebrating them. That is how you will get to where you are going -- one paddle stroke at a time.