Self-control is simple when you understand that it involves putting yourself in the right situations to develop the right habits.
Wendy Wood
Discharge planning
I’ve had seven weeks to anticipate my return home, planning my discharge, so to speak.
Mike and I have been on the road, tracking around 5500 miles on our car, meeting our newest grandchild, Lottie James, in Chicago, visiting family and friends across the Midwest. I’ve had lots of time to think as we stayed indoors hiding from low gray clouds, wind, and cold wet weather everywhere we went.
Something’s gotta give
When a patient enters physical rehab, discharge planning begins immediately to determine what this person needs in order to move to the next level of care, whatever that is.
I have recognized that changes need to be made in our home environment for me to thrive for the next four-five years, at which time our arrangements will change again.
Sidebar: we share our house with our older daughter and her two teenage boys. More details are available on wearenotthewaltons.com.
The end of the pandemic takes the form of waking from a bad dream only to find a world similar to the dream. It will not end overnight. I can no longer wait for changes without.
It’s not my fault
Like most people, I have good intentions regarding my work habits, my eating and exercise habits, even my sloth habits. Somehow, nothing ever really changes.
Fifty-five hundred miles of car riding provided plenty of opportunity for reading. (Thankfully menopause had alleviated my motion sickness. Go figure.)
Wendy Wood’s book assured me that the problem isn’t really me. You can read it for the details. Basically, habits form when actions become easy and repetitive. Therefore, reduce obstacles or friction to the action to develop new habits.
Manipulating the environment is one way to increase friction for an unwanted habit and decrease it for the desired action. For example, want to watch TV less and read more? Hide the remote and leave the books out. Over time, reading becomes the habit.
Change is hard
I look around our home. Unfortunately, sharing the space with another family reduces some of my opportunities, especially for solitude, which I need badly.
For now, though, I will attempt baby steps: preparing the coffee to be made first thing in the morning. Perhaps getting out of bed for my morning java will get me moving earlier in the day. It might even prompt me to take a walk. Which gets my creative juices flowing.
I’ll let you know.