How to Get Your Sh*t Together
Have you ever been so busy that you skipped a shower you probably should have taken? So tired that you missed flossing or brushing your teeth? So distracted that you forgot deodorant? Traveling some place where washing your hands with soap wasn’t an option?
That probably catapulted you into a shame spiral, right?
You beat yourself up for failing again. You skipped again. You just need to get your shit together. You should shower. You should moisturize. You should floss every day. What kind of person misses those things? Why can’t you even get the simplest things right? It’s not that hard! What’s wrong with you? What defect makes you keep self-sabotaging even the simplest things? Who will even love you when you’re smelly and toothless and gross?
And then you just quit.
And you never showered/flossed/brushed/deodorized/used soap again.
Right?
Oh wait.
Probably not.
Because that would be insane.
Because you know that daily hygiene is important. And it’s so important that if you miss a day, you can’t just quit. So I’d bet a lot of money that you don’t feel ashamed and drop the habit forever, you just shrug it off and get back to it the next day.
But for some reason, we treat exercise and nutrition like they’re different. If hygiene is a set of practices that you implement to maintain your health and prevent any new diseases, then surely exercise and nutrition fall under that umbrella. But when we miss a day at the gym because we weren’t feeling it, or we ate an entire pint of ice cream because it was a hard day at work, we feel like we’re terrible people; like we can’t do anything right; like we’ll be fat and ugly and alone and no one will love us; and we get so ashamed and so discouraged that eventually we just quit.
When the secret to success really is to treat it like all your other hygiene practices. The secret to “getting your shit together” when it comes to health and nutrition is to stop treating it like some giant, untenable, superhuman thing. Treat it like brushing your teeth. Do it regularly and consistently. And if you missed last night, just do it this morning and move on.
I usually work out on Wednesday afternoons. But on Tuesday, my friend and I planned to work on building our barn roof. It also snowed 5″ on Tuesday which slowed us down. So we had to finish on Wednesday and I didn’t get my usual workout in. Do you know who cares about that besides me? No one. So I did the rest of my Wednesday stuff, and worked out Thursday morning and this morning like normal; like I do almost every week. And it’s fine.
Being PERFECT with your exercise or your nutrition is overrated and unrealistic. All that no-excuses, never-miss-a-day business is nonsense.
Shake it off. Get back to it. You’re doing great.