lifestyle changes don't change your life

​Yesterday morning, I got up and I did what I always do when I first get out of bed: I went to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and then stood on the scale.

I was standing there, my weary eyes looking down, when the digital number lit up. And when it did, an overwhelming disappointment swept over me. Maybe a fear of sorts. I was staring at a number that was larger than I'd seen in some time.

I made my coffee and sat down. I thought about that number for a minute. Then I pulled out a little day planner, and for the first time in a long time, I wrote the number down. I wrote it down big and bold with a sharpee so I could see it. I wrote it down to signify - this would be the day I'd make some changes.

I committed to eat differently today. I committed to run not once, but twice today.

I was on the treadmill for my second run. I was listening to Rangon Chaterjee interview Gabor Mate'. Chaterjee casually mentioned how he loves the work he gets to do helping people make lifestyle changes.

I was watching this interview on YouTube - and I'm glad I was - because I don't think I'll ever forget the look on Mate's face when he heard the word 'lifestyle'. It was if he'd just heard the most vulgar and distasteful word he'd ever heard.

He clearly knew his role there. He was the guest. So he had to quickly figure out how to process the distastefulness of it all. When he finally spoke, he gently said, I'd like to suggest we be careful with the language we use when we're trying to help people. He said, most people don't need to change their lifestyles; they need to change their lives.

Lifestyles, he went on to explain, are always a reflection of the life. If you want to change the style of your life, you first need to change your life. Many lifestyles are adopted to hide the pain people feel, he said.

Wow. Boom. Did you hear the explosion that went off in my mind? The echoes are still out there if you listen closely.

The number on the scale had nothing to do with how I was eating, or how many miles I was putting in. That number was a reflection of me. It was the story of my life, not a story of what my life ate for dinner last night.

I thought about it on the treadmill, how much of my life I've adopted lifestyle changes to avoid dealing with changes in my life. There has been: I need to give up alcohol, eat more plants, run more, go to church more often, watch less trash on television, and so on.

Lord, are there a lot of so on's....

There have been dozens of reinventions of my outsides that have failed to even scratch the surface of what I have going on inside. There have been dozens of new styles of me I've presented to others while the same old me keeps showing up for me.

I have been slowly but surely figuring this out the last few years. The bomb Mate' set off yesterday wasn't a grand revelation. For me, language has always been huge. So to hear the exact right words put out there for me to grab hold of and use to tackle my life with - that was a bomb of a gift.

It was a gift to be reminded that the right thing to consider yesterday in the wake of the number wasn't what was going on outside me - food and miles - it was what is going on inside me.

It was a gift to be reminded I'm not working on making better lifestyle choices, I'm working on making a better me. I'm not working on building a me that is pleasant for the world to see, I'm working on building a me that is pleasant for me to be.

This world is built on encouraging us to adopt one lifestyle or another. Our commerce is built on it.

Let me encourage you to adopt something completey free. Adopt the you that you want to be. The you that you know you are meant to be.

Your lifestlye will follow suit.