When I learned that the World Health Organization is now saying that taking 10,000 steps a day is one of the best things we can do for ourselves, I thought “what a good idea” and eagerly started counting. According to the WHO, the average person walks 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day, 6,000 to 7,000 short of the number recommended for optimum fitness.
My faithful companion on my daily jaunts is a marvelous little app called Pacer. (Free for both Android and iPhone.) Put your phone in your pocket and away you go, confident that Pacer is doing the counting for you.
I mentioned this project recently and heard in reply, “Oh, no, not me. That sort of thing is just an opening for failure and self-hate.”
Ah, such a perfect opportunity for this year of “Upping Your Game.” (Or any year for that matter.) One of the primary ways egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate controls a person is captured in that reaction. I decide to do something. I get talked out of doing it. I get beaten for not doing it. I get trained not to decide to do things.
What we can do instead, of course, is to use that “training” to train ourselves NOT to give attention to egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate’s attempts to train us!
In another conversation on a different topic I was told, “The voices have beaten me forever about not getting up early enough in the morning. I’ve decided that I will not entertain another conversation from the voices about what time I get up. Not only that, I’m going to stop trying to get up early! I refuse to listen to any more abuse about how I live my life.”
That’s the ticket! Whatever commitment we make, we make for our own benefit. We must refuse to let the voices of egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate turn our commitments into a contest we’re meant to lose.
We can make commitments for anything we choose, and we can use those commitments to remove egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate’s control from our lives. Now that’s a twofer!
Gassho,
Cheri