I get a daily email from "Mark's Daily Apple" and read it religiously. Today, especially, his blog hit home. It was about blaming others, our situations, basically everybody and everything but ourselves for our own problems. Here's a blurb:
"Blame admittedly allows us to languish in the presumed comfort of bad habits. It allows us to wallow in laziness, to accept inertia for the sake of ongoing bitterness."
Wow! I don't tend to blame others but I can't tell you the amount of times I've blamed a situation for my shortcomings. Too exhausted from work to take the dogs out. Too broke to find a gym to swim at. Too busy to cook a healthy meal. Too hot to go for a run. Or my personal favorite: I can eat this (fill-in-the blank fatty/sugary food) because I worked hard today. All lame, no super lame excuses. All are ways for me to pass the buck onto something else since I'm not seeing the results I want in the mirror. All force me back a step (or two) and shake my self-confidence.
So what should I do? The answer is simple though difficult to put into practice. Accept that I am not perfect and that I will hit roadblocks along the way. Some will be self-created and some will be thrown at me by chance. How I recover from these setbacks will be the true measure of my progress.
Mark summed it up well:
"Life, as we will eventually come to understand (hopefully before it’s too late), will never be perfect. It will never be easy. There will always be obstacles, annoyances, and limitations to contend with on the path to health and well-being. Regardless of what our lives look like next to someone else’s, ours is still the one we go home with at the end of the day. Ours is the one we get to live – for all its possibility as well as challenge. What will you make of it today?"
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