Perfection Is The Lowest Standard We Can Set For Ourselves

Perfection doesn't exist.  When we expect it, we immediately set ourselves up for failure because the unattainable standard we've set in our minds can never be reached. Therefore, we've unknowingly set the lowest expectation for ourselves by mistakenly setting the highest.

It’s rather arrogant to set an impossible standard for ourselves and not for others. But we tend to be kind, supportive and understanding of our friends, seeing them through their tough times and setbacks, while beating ourselves up relentlessly for any misstep of our own.

It’s unreasonable to expect perfection and success from ourselves while holding others to a separate standard.

Lets not place expectations on anyone, not ourselves, our friends, our opponents, our family or even strangers. The truth is that no one can predict or rehearse life. Life has a beautiful unpredictability to it.

Some of the contents of the above post originated from an article by Danielle Robinson, March 29, 2013 - mindbodygreen.com,

I've previously posted articles about:
Breaking Bad Habits and how it takes MORE
than 21 Days to Form a Habit.


Here’s one about Building New Habits.

Read This If You're Trying to Cultivate a New Habit 
                       by Yoni Freedhoff, M.D. – www. weightymatters

People talk about cultivating new habits all the time. While I've busted the 3 weeks myth over on US News and World Report, thinking on habits led me to ponder flossing.

Flossing is easy, cheap, quick and good for you. And I'd bet there are truly large numbers of people out there who despite on occasion going through spurts of months of regular flossing, fall off the flossing wagon.

Why?

Because flossing fails to fall into the two categories of things that truly allow us to form "habits". Those two categories are easy to define. There are those things we actually enjoy doing and those things we simply must do.

For the actually enjoy category it's certainly not difficult to sustain those behaviours and often this category includes behaviours that may not be "good" for us like snacking on junky yummy food, after dinner drinks, favourite show watching, obsessive social network checking, etc.

The must do category on the other hand, that'll include things that we might not honestly enjoy, but things we simply don't have a choice but to do, and might include: getting up each week day to go to work or school, cleaning up after our kids, etc.

Flossing?

Not sure there's anyone out there who'd say that they "enjoy" flossing, and certainly there's no truly immediate repercussions of not doing it to suggest it must be done, which may well be why in my own life, despite having had 6 month or longer stretches of daily flossing, I've also had those stretches end for no particularly good reason - this despite the fact that I'd been doing it for quite a long time, long enough that I might have thought it was a "habit".

If you're aiming to improve upon your lifestyle, diet or health, your best bet is to try to find a way to truly enjoy your desired change, or more likely, convince yourself that it is something you simply "have" to do (for instance I am not a natural lover of exercise, but I've convinced myself it's something I have to do - both in the context of walking my talk, and also in the context of setting a good example for my children), because otherwise, just like flossing, what might feel like a truly established habit can disappear in a flash....until of course the week before your next dentist appointment.

Sometimes vulgar and offensive language just feels appropriate. Right now I'm dealing with some unwelcome weight-gain - despite my best efforts, but am working to Accept the Reality of it, and to Focus on my Behavior rather than on my Results.

Articles such as this inspire me to understand and accept the situation, and give me strength to continue my ongoing maintenance struggle.

Obesity Fact #2: Diets Rarely Work in the Long-Term 
                     by Dr. Ayra Sharma, M.D. - Obesity Management Professor

Fact #2 about obesity from the New England Journal of Medicine paper states simply that,

“Diets (i.e., reduced energy intake) very effectively reduce weight, but trying to go on a diet or recommending that someone go on a diet generally does not work well in the long-term.”

This statement needs to be read very carefully as it actually comprises of two facts: the first alludes to the fact that reducing energy intake effectively reduces weight (which it no doubt does); the second to the fact that simply being asked to or wanting to go on a diet seldom results in long-term weight loss.

As the authors point out,

“This seemingly obvious distinction is often missed, leading to erroneous conceptions regarding possible treatments for obesity; recognizing this distinction helps our understanding that energy reduction is the ultimate dietary intervention required and approaches such as eating more vegetables or eating breakfast daily are likely to help only if they are accompanied by an overall reduction in energy intake.”

What the authors do not state, but is increasingly obvious (and would certainly count as a “fact” in my books), is that complex hormonal, metabolic and neurochemical changes associated with weight gain result in powerful biological adaptations that serve to defend against weight loss and to promote weight regain.

It is these counter-regulatory alterations, which include persistent changes in neurohormonal activation of appetite as well as marked reductions in resting and activity related thermogenesis, that together orchestrate the biological response to weight loss explaining why the vast majority of individuals, who lose weight with lifestyle interventions alone, fail to keep it off.

Simply stated, the failure of most diets has little to do with lack of motivation or will power - it has everything to do with the fact that the body very effectively “defends” its body weight and will ultimately wear down all but the most compulsively obsessed dieters.

This is not being “negative” about the success of dieting - this is simply acknowledging the reality of our biology.  It is also the rational explanation for the fact that most diets (irrespective of whatever happens to be the current fat: low-fat, low-carb, high-protein, or anything else) fail for most people and why true long-term “success stories” are indeed remarkably rare.

It would certainly help if fact #2 found its way not just into obesity policies but also into the realisation that obesity, once established, requires treatments that have to go well beyond meaningless and ineffective “eat-less-move-more” mantras.

                Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes – February 20, 2013 www. drsharma.ca