Space- the final frontier a guest blog by Linda

Thanks for Paul for allowing me to be a guest blogger on his space. I have a thought I’d like to share with you, something you may already know but it was BIG for me!

Something Chris said on Saturday has been rolling around in my head since. He said that by taking control of one area of our lives (health) we have created ‘space’ to deal with other issues that also need attention. Besides learning to eat right and exercise, the most interesting part of this project for me has been figuring out why I haven’t done this (eat right and exercise) before. When it comes down to it, being healthy is not all that complicated. In conversations with several of you, I know you, too, have lost weight and feel better and have now started to deal with deeper issues in your lives. Getting control of your health has allowed you to have the ‘space’ to deal with these other issues. And, I have experienced the same thing. Wow.

I asked Tom this morning (at the Y) why I didn’t already know this. You see, through the years I have read many diet books. In fact, I have been known to hear an interview with an author about a new diet and run right out to Borders to buy the book. (Ok, I never ran to Borders. In fact, I usually sat at my desk and ordered the book online.) They each have a different angle, but I never found information that prompted me to start eating right and exercising. Several of the authors do talk about figuring out why you overeat, but none of their reasons ever applied to me. I told Tom that none of the books I’ve read mentioned this ‘space’ that is created by simply taking control and actually changing behavior.

And, then it hit me! The diet books have it backwards! They talk about figuring out why you overeat, don’t exercise and generally don’t take care of yourself. They suggest you figure out these reasons so you can change your life. But – and here’s the big insight for me – you have to change the behavior before you can figure out the reason(s) why you weren’t taking care of yourself. Without changing the behavior, you don’t have the ‘space’ to be able to understand the ‘why’.

Like I said, you may already know this but thinking along these lines applies to so many areas of our lives. You can’t understand something until you change it and are able to look back at the old behavior. And to allow growth (maturity) you have to step out and change behavior so you can learn the next set of lessons.