Cold Showers And The Re-set Switch

A couple of days ago I discovered our hot water heater wasn't working the hard way by being blasted with an artic spray from the shower. Not my favorite way to wake up, I assure you.  After my teeth stopped chattering and my skin was no longer blue I began imagining the annoying process my husband would have to go through changing the elements out - and that was the best case scenario.   Shoes and coats and my collection of assorted tote bags and purses were hauled out of the hallway closet so that Eric could operate on the appliance, and miraculously after a few minutes of fiddling in the closet, it roared to life with a reassuring hiss of water being heated.  Grinning with with the joy that he could take a Sunday nap instead of spending hours worth of work on the water heater and a trip to the hardware store, Eric announced, "Just needed to flip the re-set switch!"

Wouldn't it be great if the same could be said of motivation?  Aren't we that have been on the journey for any amount of months in danger of becoming like the old hot water heater?  When we are first brand new and finding our first successes on the scales, we're fired up, full of heat, able to let the warmth flow on demand.  Then, over time and use, our temperature cools gradually...to the point that we may even cool off completely, letting those bad habits creep back in to decrease our temperature.  Sometimes there's a catalyst, a stressful situation or lack of results, that causes our breakers to trip.  What do we do then?

Simple: we clear out our closets.   We drag out not our collection of bags, shoes, and coats but rather our stresses, bad habits, and excuses.   We dig down past the clutter of life and find out what's wrong with our "machine."  Sometimes we simply need a re-set and sometimes we might need a little tinkering to make the machine work again...in the form of a nutrition over-haul or a mix-up of the workout routine.  

When an appliance stops working, we don't sit back and bemoan the reasons for it's malfunction.  We don't blame the appliance and resolve to live without it's services.  We simply repair or replace and move on with life.   Why can't we do the same for ourselves?   We don't resolve never to take a warm shower again when we know we can hit the re-set switch and be back in business.  The same can be said for getting back to business with weight loss, no matter if it's your first time re-setting your switch or the 575th.  The point is that you hit that switch.