Envisioning

Yesterday's post mentioned listening to your appetite. 

One story in Health At Every Size was about a woman who found herself mindlessly eating at night. When she stopped and listened to that urge, what she found was that she hated her job. It was mind-numbingly boring, and once home she tried to continue the numbing with a different technique. Having faced that, she started preparing for a job change.

In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo mentions that her client's lives often transform after the tidying. Often they change careers or start their own businesses.

If the environment and the body we inhabit are both things that we become accustomed to ignoring, given how much a job can dominate one's life, it stands to reason that there is a lot we shut out about our jobs. Focusing and listening might call for change.

Don't confuse familiarity with comfort.

As I started noticing these similarities, it made two books sections on envisioning your life seem more connected.

They are different questions. For tidying, it is about picturing your ideal life. 

In the manga, Chiaki remembered that she had chosen her apartment because of the kitchen. She wanted to come home from work, change into cute lounging clothes, and be able to cook or eat or socialize. Not only did a cluttered apartment where nothing could be found make that difficult, but she had forgotten that was what she wanted.

In Health At Every Size, the group members all had an idea of what their ideal life would be like, and it would be the one that would start once they lost the weight. Their process involved first checking to see if there were any ways in which their weight was protecting or helping them in some way. Then, they needed to examine if some of those goals could happen with their current body. Could they be more social, or more active, or travel, or have a relationship, or get a promotion, just they way they already were?

Maybe what you want is possible, but assumptions get in your way.

Maybe that is familiar, and almost comfortable.

But if that is where you are, what if that change that makes everything else fall into place never comes? 

Is your life good enough then?