Keeping it Simple

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated” Confucius

Week #7

It’s already week 7 of my experiment.  Remember the Hypothesis: Small changes will bring big results.  As I think about the steps thus far I feel good that I have taken the time to think through this coming year, and really focusing on the first step in my 'PART'…Plan it purposefully.  I am determined to go about this very intentionally, with a clearly laid out plan.

Let me summarize what I've done thus far.

1. Brainstormed areas in my life that are important.
2. Created eight categories from that list
3. Using the ideas of category headings, created a way to remember them. (RESEARCH)
4. Established the general principles that I want to use when creating my small steps.  (BASIC)
5. I drew up a contract that I wanted to stick to throughout my project. (PART)
6. Broke down the categories and assessed where I currently was with each area.

Now that I have my  ‘pre-assessment’ complete, I can begin to create the small steps I want to take.  As I think how I want to go about this, I have a couple of ideas in mind.  I can either randomly list small steps I want to take, or I can focus on one category at a time.  (Or a few areas…hmmm?)  Time to look back at my 

BASIC principles of setting goals.
Begin it now
Attitude needs to be positive
Simple
Intentional
Creative

Since one of my principles is to ‘begin it now’ and another is to ‘keep it simple’, I think I need to focus on one category at a time.  I’m most anxious to begin now on my ‘health’. Remember that I divided health into two subcategories: body and mind.   I’ll start with body.

 Let me first give you a little background about vitamins and me.  There was a time you could walk into my house and find vitamins A-Z nicely lined up on my kitchen shelf.  I even ordered them in bulk and spent hours reading Dr. Weil’s tips and treasures.  I also kept a vitamin Bible close at hand. And yes, I even got caught in a health pyramid when you listen to the infomercial and buy 10 pints of ‘pond scum’, of course they called it by another name, for only $19.95 and then try and sell it to your best friends to become wealthy.   I know, that’s pathetic!  But something happened with my mega vitamin stage…Maybe it was when my vitamin case that I kept well organized in my purse, spilled out on the restaurant table (I saw others looking my way like I was a drug addict) Actually, maybe it was the confusion of which one I should take now, how many of them should I take, and can I take these on an empty stomach or after I’ve eaten this entire pizza…or maybe it was on one of my trips out of town when I yelled out my husband to stop the car.  I threw myself out on the side of the road and vomited all over the sand dunes.  He said, “what’s the matter with you? “  I said, “I think it’s my vitamins”.  During the end of my vitamin obsession, I was feeling like I was having symptoms of a heart attack.  I continued to have indigestion and felt tightness in my chest. I had to keep bending in half to burp and I would toss and turn in the night to try and get relief.  I thought that maybe I just needed to take more vitamins.   I finally made an appointment with the Dr and he scheduled me for an endoscopy…. You know, where that take the 4 foot long telescope and slide it down your throat and tell you to relax and to try not to swallow.

Well, I happened to be talking to my sister a few days before the scheduled procedure, and telling her I thought I might be going to die and so I finally made a Doctor appointment and they were booking me in to the outpatient clinic in a few days.  She asked me kind of casually, “you’re not taking any iron vitamins are you”? I glanced up on my overcrowded shelf of Nature Made ‘back stock’ and said, “uh huh’.  She said…"maybe it’s the iron you are taking".  I know when I was pregnant and the Dr. prescribed Iron pills for me and they made me feel just like that. ?  “Really? I thought that’s how everyone felt when they were pregnant.”  I stopped taking my iron immediately and the next day I felt perfectly fine.  I called and canceled my medical procedure and saved my insurance company some big bucks. Anyway…it’s a long story I know…but as of now and as of the past few years I have stopped taking all my vitamins. I actually did a ceremonial flushing them down the toilet.   But, now I’m ready to try again...this time using the ‘small step’ principle.  I have decided I am going to begin by taking one general one a day vitamin, without the iron. (Just wondering, is anybody else out there might be allergic to iron pills?)

I don’t know if I’ll add anymore vitamins along the way, but I want to begin by just keeping it simple (as in the S in BASIC) and I’ll begin it now.  By the way, I shared my new goal with a friend recently and she immediately said, “don’t you think you also need to take fish oil, Glucosamine Chondroitin, and some extra vitamin B…oh and don’t forget the magnesium. “ … I can see keeping it simple is not going to be easy.