Dear Reader:

I wonder how many times I have mentioned that I am tired on this blog.   My life is tiring, sometimes.   Wonderful, joyful, crazy.   But, also tiring.   This week has been too full for any coherent blogging (my dear readers are probably saying to themselves - "since when has she aspired to coherence?").    Many ups and a few downs this week.   You know.   Life.

But, my day today started with this:

And, the evening meal looked a bit like this:

Isn't that lovely?  I will admit that, outside the confines of this picture, there is total and utter chaos.   But, at least I can carve a space out for myself to try and be mindful.  

I am basically finishing up the cleanse this week.   Introduced sugar on Tuesday night in the form of a glass of wine.   Not a great reaction to it - possibly it was something other than the sugar, but....   I've never been a huge fan of alcohol.   Never went through a big drinking phase in college or beyond.  I think I can live without it, frankly.

I think the main thing I have learned during this cleanse is a better awareness of when I feel full and an ability to (more often than I have in the past) make a decision to stop eating.    I am building a good habit, I think, of asking myself how I feel in the moment before I eat and how I want to feel in and about myself long term and whether a decision to eat a certain food fits in with that.   Also, I am drinking more water and less coffee, tea and/or soft drinks.   That's a good thing.   I am checking labels more.    I am planning on making a real effort to eat "real" foods much more often and processed foods much less often.   And, I have lost 10 lbs.   But, this is the least of the significant accomplishments that I have achieved during these past many weeks.

I've been thinking about mindsets lately.   I've read a lot of "positive psychology" stuff in recent weeks.   The name itself seems a little "faddish" to me, and I'll admit to being fairly skeptical about the uber-cheerful "you can do this" philosophy that seems to bolster most of the shallower practitioners of this sort of psychology.    But one concept that really resonates with me is the fixed mindset/growth mindset dichotomy.    I think I have realized that, while I am primarily finding myself in the "growth" mindset camp on most life fronts, I don't think I've quite admitted to myself how much of a fixed mindset I have about my weight loss, wellness, and body image issues.   There is a part of me that has felt all efforts are futile.   That it is not something that I can achieve, given my personality or my metabolism or the extent to which I have allowed food to act as a substitute emotional nurturer in my life for so, so long.   I was talking to a student today about the fixed mindset in piano practice and how it can just cripple any hope of progress, and I realized - oh yeah, I think I do have this issue with food.   But, the research shows that one can, in fact, move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset with a lot of work.    Hence, this blog.   The more I reflect and see my tendencies in the cold light of day, the more I can work on replacing self-destructive thinking with self-compassion and rational optimism.   If I can do this in other areas of my life - parenting, relationships, teaching, practicing/performing - I can do it in this one.   Realizing this about myself actually made me more empathetic to what my students go through in learning piano.   An unexpected benefit.

And, I will.   See there.   I can, little by little, turn this ship around in the direction that I want it to go.

I also took an online quiz that is related to Gretchen Rubin's ("The Happiness Project") new book about "Tendencies" of people related to inner and outer expectations.  You can read about that here:

http://www.gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2013/10/what-kind-of-person-are-you-the-four-rubin-tendencies/

I am an Obliger.  So not a surprise.   I have trouble meeting internally imposed expectations for myself, but I spend myself dry meeting outer expectations from others.   Wow.   Yes.   Hello, my name is Lisa and I have a problem with emotional regulation.   Ha.  Seriously.   If I ever end up in a long-term relationship with a partner (hope springs eternal!), it will need to be with someone who knows this tendency and does not take advantage of it in any way.   Whew.   Anyway, I am looking forward to reading this book.   Because my feeling is that life can only be improved if we just read all. of. the. books. about. everything.   RIGHT?   (Hello, my name is Lisa and I am a totally obsessed academic/intellectual type.)    

There is, however, a part of me (I contain multitudes, remember?) that would like to put all of the self-reflection and ruminating into a bottle and send it out to sea.    This looks appealing.   Maybe I will find a way to do something like this during the weekend to come:

And, to end this nearly, but-not-quite, coherent post,  I'll share a lovely sentiment:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.   I will meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense.

--From The Essential Rumi -  Coleman Barks

Thanks for reading!