Today is the first day of Lent here. For a lot of people that equals the first day of a 40 day ‘giving up things’ period. Traditional ‘culprits’ are alcohol, cigarettes, sweets, chocolates, television. Personally I will try to give up on judging people. Not for 40 days, for good. It won’t be easy but I will do my best.
Anyway as usual I digress (maybe I should give that up as well)J. I just wanted to briefly point out one thing to look out for when ‘giving up things’. As with most stuff when you remove something it leaves a void or vacuum behind. The question is what are you going to do with that void? You are used to have that pint, sweet, cigarette, TV soap at certain times during the day. Now that you decided to give them up, you created a vacuum or void. What are you going to do with that time?
If you don’t think about this you might have an extra glass of wine instead of the sweets whilst you didn’t want to have an extra glass of wine to start with. So that void has been filled with something you didn’t want to, negating the good you thought it was going to do.
Instead think about what you really like doing and is good for you and replace the free time with it. Instead of watching the TV, go for a walk. Instead of the sweets have a fruit salad. Instead of going to the pub, go support your local sports club (that’s one for the armchair fans who after this rant I will no longer judge on it J).
Filling the void purposefully with positive things you like enhances the chance of you sticking with it after the 40 days have past. And if not then you had fun doing it instead of feeling it was a chore.
Enjoy your 40 day transformation. Enjoy your new found habit. Have a great Lent!!
Patrick Mercie – 4ward 2 Success – 25/02/2009