Day 20!

20 days seems like a long time! That's pretty exciting. In theory, by tomorrow my new habit should be firmly entrenched. I have a feeling I'm not quite there yet.

This is definitely still a conscious act, every day. And I'm still facing off against this wall of clothes from our trip--I can't seem to find the time to get them all put away.

I battle in my mind between understanding why it's not done yet and rattling off excuses but also believing the excuses are legitimate. Does that make sense?

For example, yesterday I started the job but didn't have time to finish it. Every moment was filled with other things that were also important--work, baby, food, relaxing (yes, that counts as important). ...I just deleted a whole sentence about today's story (which was very similar to yesterday's story) because I thought--who cares? If I did the best I could, then accept it and move on. There's no point in mulling it over and whining about it if I actually believe I made the right choices.

If there's something to learn from the experience, go ahead and learn it; otherwise, move on, there's nothing to be upset about.

So what I think I have to learn, yet again, is that things take time and I don't have time to do all of them myself. I can choose to have someone else watch the baby tomorrow and spend time at home cleaning up. And I can eliminate something else so I can spend time later in the day playing. I work with clients to help them see that they're making choices all the time and those choices bring them the results they have in their lives. I strongly encourage them to see that owning these choices is empowering.

When you own your choices, behaviors, decisions then you have the power to change them if you want to. (Ha ha on you, Victim Voice!) And that's the point of the whole habit-shifting exercise.

So I'll keep working on the every day clothes (yesterday they did get put away), and my next extra step will be to make it easy for myself to put away the trip stuff and the laundry simply by giving myself the free time to do it. The bottom line is that's all it takes, some time to just get it done, and choosing to prioritize it over the other million things I could be doing. I see how it affects me, and that it's worth it to get it done as soon as possible. I'm working on it.