WEIGHT LOSS

For more than a year now, I've been eating in a way that's allowed me to lose weight. Day in, day out - not always perfect but good enough. I've kept track of the pound by pound loss and by now I've filled up pages in a little pad I keep near the scale. Every once in a while, I go through the entries, track the slowly declining numbers, July, September, January, July again. It's the record of my commitment, my willingness to keep to a beneficial discipline.
     The other day I hit a new low, a significant low, and I felt a rush of deep pleasure, a special combination of amazement that I've done it and the thrill of satisfaction. For a few minutes, I walked around the house feeling delight, holding myself close, wrapped in the wonderful fact of my achievement.
     I thought about the day after day gradual peeling away, the process that's been taking place under and through whatever else has been happening in my day or month or year. In the times I've been dragging through the Slough of Despond or been pretty much oblivious to the content of my days - through all the time I've read as disappointing or unproductive or just blah, underneath, behind it all was something positive, something nourishing that I all but ignored.  
     It's a lesson in focus, on where I choose to put my attention. It's very easy for me to see only the negative or to float away into The Great Blank. I can feel all my internal eyes shifting, darting, not really alighting long enough to take anything in. The internal flow becomes incoherent, chaotic, overflowing with content, holding on to very little meaning. 
     In this year of continuing commitment, I'm going to take the time to feel hard won satisfaction. It's possible I can even manage to feel proud of myself. Even if I feel like a fool, I'm going to stand in front of a mirror and really take in how much my body has changed. I'm going to take time to think about how I can build on this accomplishment; is there some other good I can do for myself.  I don't have to drive myself to find that "other good." In fact, a frenetic search built on self-will is guaranteed to do more harm than good. Better to walk around allowing myself some good feeling which opens the possibility of coming to good ideas...
     You got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on the affirmative, and don't mess with Mr. In Between.