A Year to Change: Conversations with women on choice, connections, and clarity in midlife

I’m in California for a few days.  Things really are different here.  I watched my friend have a Thai massage and I got some interesting advice from the woman who did the work.

She says, “If you want to change, you will. If you don’t want to change, you won’t.”

So what is the magic pill, the button, the miracle, that will make me know that the change I’m talking about is necessary, right and good?  What will make me quit talking and do the thing?

We talked about that little sort of “mother tone” of judgment in my head –  that voice that really means “you better….”
But that wasn’t in her voice.  For her it was just a statement of fact.  People just do what they want to do. I do know that’s true, especially for me!

Her experience with aging parents gave her a glimpse into her future that did not include strong and independent people. She didn’t want that life. “I want to be able to open jars when I’m 90.”

In my experience old people (OK, oldER people – my mother would not want to be said to be OLD!)  Let me start again: the next generation of people in my family did what they wanted to be doing, pretty much until they died.  So  I don’t have her model of frail old people to use as an anchor in my future.  They won’t be the compelling picture that gets me moving toward change.

And while I have reason to believe that I’m  less fit now than I was 20 years ago, and I have reason to believe that without any change, I’ll be worse off at the end of the next 20 years, I don’t necessarily think that will be a bad place — even if it should be! Getting old does not seem scary to me.

So I’m thinking, maybe I don’t want to make my changes clearly enough.

It’s not about badly enough.. just clearly enough.  What really is on the other side of diet and exercise?

If I don’t know what I’ll get from changing my life, if I don’t even know what I want from changing my life, then why bother to do any work to make the change?

In terms of weight and exercise, if there is no specific reward on the other side of the experience, it’s easy to put off the doing. I’m guessing there will be no reason to maintain the adjustment.  It won’t stick.  And I hate doing work for no good reason.

So I’m working now on figuring out my own compelling reason for change.  What will I really get when I can trust my body to do what I want it to do?

I’m thinking  her reasons. That’s why her health things are working.. ok, maybe not the cigarettes.. but the other stuff.