It Doesn't Work if You Don't Do It

We all find activities that make a big difference in our lives. If we write gratitude lists every day, we notice an increase in our enjoyment of life. Or if we walk on a regular basis we notice we have more energy and our mood is uplifted.

Then, for unknown reasons, we quit doing what we know improves our lives. It doesn't cost much, doesn't take much time, and greatly increases our ability to appreciate our gifts and deal with our challenges, AND YET WE STOP DOING IT.

What is this about? Most of us know this phenomenon. "Yes, I was doing those things and was feeling better. It was easy, but then I stopped. I don't know why. Huh. That's interesting."

I think we stop doing what serves us because these insidious thoughts creep into our minds and take over: "This is too easy. This is too little. Such a small behavior can't make a profound effect on my life. I don't need to do this anymore. I need to find something newer, sexier, harder, more complicated."

So we stop doing what supports our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Then we wonder why we find ourselves right back where we were when we started doing those things that had been improving our lives.

Here is what interests me: We brush our teeth everyday, twice a day, even though we don't have a huge effect from one brushing. We brush our teeth because we know it benefits us in the long term. We don't debate every day whether or not we are going to brush our teeth; we just do it.

People who grow up in the Culture of Poverty do not take care of their teeth and they lose them. A deep belief in the Culture of Poverty is that what we do doesn't matter. It’s all about luck anyway -- so why bother with boring little things such as brushing our teeth?

I think most of us have a bit of this Culture of Poverty in our brains. This is what stops us from writing, walking, tapping, singing, dancing, stating our appreciation and gratitude and all those behaviors that take so little time and produce such great results.