Friday, January 11, 2013

Attempting to not fail

“What I’ve experienced is that I can’t know the future. I can’t know if anything that I do will change what happens tomorrow. I can’t know with certainty, but what I do know is if I do nothing, nothing will change.” ~ James Orbinski
Because I am back on Weight Watchers now, I am drawn to anything about it, either in the news, on the web, when someone talks about it.

As I logged into Facebook this morning, there was a post on the WW wall asking, "If you could do anything and not fail at it, what would you do?"

I was taken aback at first.  Don't we go into everything we do with a nod to failure?  I like to think that I walk around spouting that for me FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.  I mean, how can we learn if there is no option for failure?

What is it about ourselves that makes us so afraid of failing?  I'm sure we've all failed at something at least once in our lifetimes.  For me, as a child, it was MATH.  In the beginning of my educational career, I did just fine.  Adding and subtracting were EASY.  When they attempted to teach us multiplication and division, I became sadly lost.  Weird, right?  If I could master the earlier equations, why couldn't I do these, which clearly involved some sort of adding and subtracting anyway?  Don't EVEN ask me about fractions.

Fast forward to adulthood.  I went through high school and college as what they call a Skinny Minny.  I didn't even have a chest until senior year of college.   Pretty much wore a training type bra until then. Seriously.  I graduated, started working and being able to eat better and packing on the pounds.  I joined Weight Watchers then, and lost 42 lbs.  I looked amazing again.  I even kept it off for two years.  Then, I met my husband, and in the throes of our early love, we ate like crazy.  I was still in the mind of the way to a guy's heart is through his stomach, but I included my own stomach and gained again.  FAILURE.

Next time I attempted weight loss, I did it on my own and lost about 25 lbs.  Still could not keep it off.  I was feeling great and then suffered the loss of my dad.  The depression sent me into an eating frenzy and I gained it all back and more.  FAILURE.

Four years ago, I joined WW AGAIN and took off 52 lbs.  I was doing so well and then was dealt my own health setback.  I focused on the fact that I was going to get through this issue, but honestly, the stress of all the tests, the operation that followed and the recovery, I failed yet again.

Now, I'm back on the journey.  I have A LOT of weight to lose.  What's different now?  I refuse to let failure be an option.  When I say this, I mean on the whole.  I know that I won;t be successful if I beat myself up about every setback, but this time I'm focusing on not having any.  I'm already feeling so good with the small changes I've made in my eating habits, that I'd be dumb to not fully embrace this.

And, I will not fail.


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