Be Conscious: No Zero Days and Learning To Forgive
We’ve all had those days. You start the day super motivated and raring to go. You write your to-do list with a few tasks you think are definitely do-able. Then you glance out the window and see how gloomy it looks. Your mood drops slightly. You watch some videos online to lift your spirits and end up falling asleep watching said videos. Suddenly, half the day is gone and you’re pissed at yourself for falling into the same bad habits that you’ve been working to fix.
OK, so this probably doesn’t happen to everyone, but it happens to me fairly frequently. In fact, this happened to me just this past Sunday. I was being pretty hard on myself and was thinking of chalking the day off as a loss. Then I remembered I had signed up for my second yoga class that day and spent the next hour debating on whether I should go or not. I mean, I was feeling super tired and drained, despite that super long nap I took.
In the end, I forced myself out of bed and took my ass to class. I figured if I was going to write off most of the day, I would at least be able to say I had done this one thing. Plus, I was in dire need of groceries and the yoga studio I was going to was conveniently located right next to a Trader Joe’s.
I’m not ashamed to admit I felt super proud of myself for going to class. I was basically patting myself on the back during my whole grocery shopping trip. My second yoga session had gone much better than the first one, and it felt great to know that I could already feel some progress in my body. I even felt super motivated to go home and try to get a few things done.
At the moment of writing this, I’m still happy with what I accomplished, even if it was only one thing. It reminds me of a post I saw on Tumblr a few years ago, about leading a disciplined life. One of the points the post made was about trying to have no zero days.
What Is A Zero Day
What’s a zero day, you ask?
A zero day is when you don’t do a single thing towards whatever dream or goal or want or whatever that you got going on.
Basically, no matter what you do, you have to try to do one thing, anything for that day. If it’s like 11:59 PM, then just write one sentence or something, because that’s more than doing nothing.
I really like this rule, and usually take it to heart. I always try to find a way to cross off one thing on my to-do list, or at least semi-cross it off.
Usually, this works pretty well for me. Not always, but usually. On the days where I drop the ball, I try to think of the third point in the post: forgive yourself.
Forgiving Yourself is Key
Every day is a new day. So you f-cked up yesterday and ended up just watching Netflix and eating crap in bed all day. That was yesterday. Stop beating yourself up and give yourself another chance. After all, we’re only human (I mean, I know I am, at least).
Nowadays more and more people are trying to be mindful and conscious in their lives, and in my opinion, discipline goes right along with them.
Bad days can easily spiral. I’ll have a streak of no zero days and then one random day I’ll drop the ball. Those days are often the hardest, because when you don’t forgive yourself, it’s easy to get caught in the rut of dropping that ball over and over and over again, until you don’t even have a ball to drop.
OK, I have no idea if that ball analogy made sense, but I hope you get the point I was trying to get across. @@Making progress is an uphill battle, and each step, no matter how small, counts for something.@@
