Get out of deficit thinking

Today I read a good article on getting out of deficit thinking. What's that? Well, if you are thinking about New Year's resolutions, and if you are thinking that you need to fix all the problems in your life, and you want to break all your bad habits and fix all your shortcomings in the new year, then that is deficit thinking. It's the whole "glass half empty" thing. Focusing on what you are not good at, what you are failing at, or where you fall short is a recipe for being miserable all the time.

I have this problem a lot.

The list of things I am not doing, things I should have done years ago, things I never should have done -- these lists go on forever. You want a perpetual motion machine? I give you the Self-Criticism 4000!

So in the new year, I invite you, along with me, not to try to fix everything that's going wrong. Rather, let's all try to identify what works well and build on that! Right now, what is working well for me is getting up early to go run. Though I have not actually run, because of the hip injury, I did get up several times over the Christmas holiday just to reinforce the habit. Now that I have a swank new iMode alarm clock that allows me to get up with rockin' tunes from my iPod nano, getting up will be even easier.

Tags: article, holidays, motivation, running, jogging