The Thirty-Ninth Step

NED HAMSON

I want to live an Open Life with grace and simplicity. I want to be more creative, to be constantly learning and growing. Many of us hear these words and our heart sings back, Yes, so do I! Then our head says in a not so pleasant voice, So, how do I do it, how do I begin? The best advice usually is: begin at the beginning right? And most people say, and believe, that taking the first step on a journey is the most important, right? In this case, two rights make a wrong. Why? Most if not all of us have taken the first step in creating a new pattern, a new way of thinking, a new behaviour, hundreds, if not what seems like thousands of times. So it is not the first step that is crucial, it is the 39th or 40th step in the direction you wish to travel that determines whether you will succeed, is it not? For by the time you reach that step, you will have already traced a pattern that has made a visible difference, and one which can be used to plot out further steps along the way. What is the logic here? We all tend to begin a new personal journey with great energy and intent. So much so, that we rush headlong along the new path and either burn ourselves out, or inevitably fall so flat on our faces that we give up, now believing we will never change or succeed. What we have forgotten, or perhaps did not realise is that creating a new pattern or behaviour almost always means destroying or discarding old patterns, behaviours, or habits. The American storyteller Mark Twain had one of his characters explain this in these plain words: "Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window... but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. - Mark Twain in the story of "Puddnhead Wilson." Let me tell you how I, a professional and life-long dieter finally managed to get control of my weight and to become as fit as I always could have been. When my physician finished reading off the scores of the tests he had performed on me, I knew enough to know I was in serious trouble. I had two alternatives: A. Begin a regime of taking pills, constantly worrying about my health and not liking the way I looked, carrying 70 pounds of fat around day and night. B. Doing something about losing weight and getting fit. My doctor wished me good luck on trying to get fit and lose weight and gave me a prescription to deal with the high blood sugar and told me to return in three months for another check-up. I spent the next three days in misery. I had been at the big diet programme four times before in my life and each time had returned to my fat ways within a year. Then I remember that a friend had told me that she had permanently lost about 40 extra pounds simply by walking. Not the most manly way to lose weight, but effective. She walked three miles a day, every day. I could do that! I thought. Then I remembered, Yes and it will half kill you and you will give up on it in no time flat. Then, I found the Mark Twain quote. And a little bell went off in my head, so to speak. If I can force myself to just do a reasonable amount of walking until it is normal, I will break the habit of overdoing things. That is the habit I really had to break. The long and the short of it was that for two weeks, I only walked one quarter of a mile extra in the morning and in the evening. After those two weeks, I only added another eighth of a mile for three weeks. Every day, rain or shine whether I felt like it or not. And since it did not take long or I built in a trip to the store, I was able to do it. After three months I was walking an unheard of, for me, two miles a day. And that is how it went. Almost two years have passed now. I enjoyed seeing my doctor's jaw drop to the floor every time I weighed in (in six months things had improved sufficiently that the medication for high blood sugar was no longer needed). I now regularly walk 10 to 12 miles a day and enjoy it very much. And I know that it was taking reasonable steps and raising the bar only when, I had really mastered the current level that helped me go from the 39th step to the 40th without even thinking about it. This has been a story about losing weight? No, it has been a true story about destroying old patterns of thinking and doing, and creating new ones in a steady and reasonable way. It is a method that can be applied to creating anything new in your life that you desire as long as you focus on getting to the 39th step and not so much on the first step. Oh, and just for the record, I have walked my way to being 105 pounds lighter - now at 148 pounds which is reasonable for being 5 foot 7 1/2 inches. And by July of this year, I will have walked whew! a bit over 3,600 miles. If that had been my goal, or expectation when I had started, I do not believe I would have begun would you have? Note: My thanks to Signpost reader Dr. Manoj Mukund for suggesting this topic in an e-mail to me after the creativity article.

E-mail: nedhamson@lycos.com

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