I went to see, Singing in the Rain last night. It was a great show. It’s one of my favorite musicals and they did an amazing job recreating it for the stage. Here is a clip that goes behind the scenes – pretty cool:
Health and weight loss has far-reaching impacts on life. I really enjoyed getting dressed up to attend the show. It’s more than that I feel better, and I have a better sense of well-being.
I read this interesting article by James Clear, Forget About Setting Goals Focus on This Instead. In this piece, he suggests that it is better to put energy into creating systems rather than trying to achieve goals. Systems offer us opportunities for greater happiness, growth, and practice; whereas goals are more concrete. Yes, I achieved my goal or no I didn’t. This message resonates with me because, when I think about it, it’s been my experience that this true.
I have built up systems in terms of weight loss. My goal was to lose weight by a certain date, it didn’t happen but it’s my system, not the goal, is the thing that has kept me on track. The goal still exists – I do want to hit a certain number for health reasons, but the goal doesn’t motivate me to keep going – it’s my feedback loop that does.
When I put up a new countdown clock on the blog it was a way to check in with myself. Where am I now? I have written about feedback loops before, (Day 155). James Clear goes on to write about feedback loops as well: “Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments.” This is smart, it makes sense to me, I can’t control the future but I can control my choices.
Getting to Goal 