water your flowers

There is a time to eat and a time to abstain from eating.

When you are not hungry and want to eat to avoid doing something hard or creative, then it is time to abstain from eating. There is real discomfort involved here. Because you are going to have to deal with your anxiety or whatever uncomfortable emotion is keeping you stuck.

The discomfort is both biological and neurological. A quick chocolate chip cookie or bowl of ice cream will give you a dopamine hit that will make you feel better for the moment. Your five senses will be overtaken with momentary delight and your pleasure centers in your brain will fire accordingly—for a few minutes. Feels. So. Good. You know the drill. You’ve done it before.

Then the sensory experience will be over. And, you will be left with a buffered day or even a buffered life.

A buffered life is a life of delay of the challenging stuff. It is an unintentional life that allows the brain to go unconscious for a while to gain short-term comfort in place of long-term gain. It’s just a habit—a sinful vice.

One of my clients calls it, “Short-term happy for long-term crappy.”

And, why are you most likely eating? Because you don’t want to do the hard thing.

Sitting down and doing the hard thing like your job, dealing with the bills, feeding the kids, writing emails, creating content, writing funnels, planning posts, producing podcasts, writing a chapter in the book, finding interesting and different marketing avenues—all of this takes work.

There is a space right before you decide to do the hard thing where your brain may offer you something else. A way out. A quick release. Just one cookie and another cup of coffee.

“We’ll get right to it.” My brain will offer me this advice in just a split second’s time.

I like to imagine that at that very moment—I walk out and turn on the hose to water the proverbial flowers.

I pray outrageously.

I know that it will take work to turn the knob to get the water flowing.

In my imagination, the knob is very hard to turn on. I have to concentrate and use both hands.

Once I get it turned on—the water flows and I can get the job done that is needed at that moment. My time is intentionally scheduled on the calendar. There is no buffering scheduled there. I don’t have time for a buffered day, let alone a buffered life. I already lived that—it wasn’t great.

On my calendar, time is new and fresh every day. I decide.

Will I cut God out and buffer with food, delaying what is really important to me for a long-term crappy life?

Or will I follow my plan so that I can enjoy my evenings and planned relaxation for a long-term happy life? I decide with a little nudge from my Guardian Angel.

I’ll turn on the hose! That knob just gets easier to turn every time I decide not to buffer. And, the flowers?

Well, they are beautiful! Keep fasting my friends.