Nobody likes a tyrant, so why would you think tyrannical ruling of yourself would be effective?
In an effort to break old habits that no longer serve you, or start new routines that will improve your health, it is necessary to become a master negotiator. A successful life is full of self-negotiations. “If I don’t spend this money at Target today, I will have $100 more for vacation.” “If I don’t snooze my alarm, I’ll have time to eat breakfast before work.” “If I go to the gym today, I’ll hit my weight-loss goal in 3 months.”
We negotiate with ourselves to sacrifice something now, in order to have what we want in the future. Kind of like we do with children. “Eat your broccoli and you can have frozen yogurt.” “Stop hitting your sister and we’ll get to go to the zoo.”
We negotiate in the present to teach them self discipline in the future.
Lucky for me, my daughter was a master negotiator and she taught me well. I’ll never forget when she was about 3 years old and refused to eat the otter pop my husband had opened for her because he bit it open. She saw him put his mouth on something she was going to eat and she was OUT! I was attempting to dampen her obsession with people touching her food so I told her if she wasted that otter pop she couldn’t have another one for an entire week. Her response was, “well, how many days are in a week?” When I told her there were seven, she quietly handed me back the bit open otter pop, walked away and said “I’ll wait.”
You are no different than a child. You need to negotiate with yourself to give up what you want (or don’t want to to do) at the moment to reap the rewards in the future. Learning to negotiate with yourself is necessary to develop discipline and because tyranny never works. Plus, who wants to live with a tyrant? Just like a child, the more you tell yourself no, with no reward dangled in front of you, the more you want to do what you shouldn’t.
Life is not about ruling yourself, that will only cause rebellion. Learn to negotiate with yourself instead.
Your happiness is not a gift given to you by others.
Create a mantra for your life. If you aren't writing your story, someone else is writing it for you.
Listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eml-radio-talking-truth/id1498113483?i=1000558947971
Hello my friends!
I'm finishing up the transition away from Locals onto Substack and wanted to be sure each of you have made the necessary adjustments to your accounts. For those of you who have remaining months left on your paid support here, I have comped you the balance over at Substack.
This will be the final week I post content here.
I will resume the live recordings over there, starting with our first call on Friday, March 3rd at 9am/12pm. Invitations to join the Zoom calls will go out on Substack. Mark your calendars!
Also, be sure to download the Substack App! I love the app and find it so helpful in organizing content I want to read later by keeping it on my dashboard.
See you on the other side!
https://eviefatz.substack.com/
One of the biggest challenges in writing my book is not being able to share any of it along the way. Given my narcissistic need for constant approval and attention, not having any feedback is killing me. Even negative attention is better than no attention at all (which explains a lot of my behavior in life), so not only am I missing the praise but I also miss my haters.
I need to break out of this cave. Thanks to Chuck Palahniuk who writes Spoiler Alert on Substack, but you would know as the author of Fight Club, I got the idea to share some excerpts and things that won’t make the final edit. This will give us both what we need. I get some attention and you get some thought provoking words to make you think (and possibly laugh, cry or both.)
Today’s snippet is from the first draft of a chapter titled, Remove Your Kindergarten Name Tag. I am currently on my third revision and we can all be thankful for this. As I walk my readers through the dark hallways of my earliest years, and attempt ...
Wanted to pass this short video along. We think of health in very limited ways. Faith, nature, love, communality, shared human experience…all prove to be just as necessary, if not more so, than going to the gym.
I’ve always viewed and taught health from this perspective. It is my belief the lack of these essential elements is as big an issue in our culture as poor diet and lack of movement.
The takeaway-we can do better🙏🏼
