Big Rocks and LIttle Rocks: Navigating Terrain Shifts

Shifting Priorities: Finding long-term success has meant thinking about actions for health and wellness as big rocks and little rocks. Recently, I had to focus on keeping a few big rocks in place in order to stay successful for the long term.

Since I last wrote, a lot has changed in my life – as I anticipated it would. The changes are good, and I am grateful for that. 

I have now started my new job, which has come with a lot of apprehensive excitement. A steep learning curve usurped my capacities for routine and for writing.

But, I am finding my way back, learning how to live my new life, facing myself over and over again in a whole new world.

I am starting to sleep a little better as I adjust to everything that is new. Sleep helps everything.

I am now pausing, taking stock in what it means to navigate my health and wellness through a major turning point in my life.

Part of my adjustment means finding routines again. Routines of food, exercise, rest, and sleep amidst the ups, downs, business, and stresses of change and life. 

Another part of routine means writing this blog, which is one of my favorite things. Surprisingly, so is creating my Instagram / Facebook feed. I have come a long way.

Big Rocks and Little Rocks

Over the past few weeks, I kept coming back to a common visualization where big rocks and small rocks are used to help people set priorities.

The concept is simple: if you are going to get a lot of rocks in a jar, you need to start by placing the big rocks first, then the small rocks.

The big rocks, of course, represent the big priorities. And, that is what I held onto over the past few weeks – although I adapted the image and the analogy.

The small rocks consist of smaller priorities. You are supposed to fit these small rocks into the jar after the big rocks. In my ideal world, that would have been my strategy.

But, my reality was less than my ideal — as it almost always is. Negotiating the real with the ideal is a constant process.

Lately, I clung to the big rocks and let go of many of the small rocks rather than trying to fit them into my jar.

I occasionally got a few small rocks into my life, but keeping the big rocks in my life required almost all of my attention. I lapsed with many small rocks.

My successes around hanging on to the big rocks are significant. These mean that I do not have to start over again with a healthy lifestyle now that my schedule looks less tumultuous.

Yet, I have many smaller restarts, situated in failures. These failures around the small rocks means that it is time to reprioritize to live the way I want to live.

Even if I can live without these small rocks, they play potent roles in transforming my shadows.

The terrain constantly shifts as part of the ongoing process of making and sustaining change, of defining what is success and what is failure.

Start where I am now. Success always comes back to this mindset, this action, because it is all I can do. And, that is exactly what I will do.

Food, Travel, and Prioritizing the Big Rocks

Eat in Color to Live in Color: On my most recent trip, I shopped for food at a nearby grocery store. Doing this kept my most important big rocks in place: no salt, no oil, no sugar. I let small rocks go in the moment and had

too many nuts, too many fruits, too much oatmeal, and not enough cooked vegetables. And, I really missed having a morning smoothie. But, I succeeded in more ways than I failed.

The biggest rock that I have kept in place is this:  avoid my main triggers at all costs. This means no salt, no oil, no sugar.

Another big rock included eating as many fresh, unprocessed plants as possible — even if I got out of my optimal balances for several days at a time.

This learning is new and significant for me. And, I learned only through the process of traveling on three extended trips over the past six weeks.

Prior to these trips, I thought that the biggest rock was maintaining the balance of my foods, specifically, greens, beans, and whole grains/wet starches.

These three foods are important, and they serve as my central pillars for satiating hunger and regulating my hunger drive.

In the moment, I kept eating salt-oil-sugar free as a large rock. But, I gave up worrying about my balances.

I expected to go the other way, compromising with salt, oil, and sugar while keeping my balances. I learned that I can go longer eating out of balance than I thought – as long as I avoid my trigger foods and eat unprocessed plants. 

Getting out-of-balance with unprocessed plants gave me a surprising latitude in creating successful trips. Getting back into balance has been so much easier without having added salt, oil, and sugar.

With each trip, I got a little better at traveling. I learned what foods to bring and how to center my health and wellness in times when eating against my best interests would have been easier.

Since traveling will be a bigger reality in my life, I wanted to learn how to make it work. Each trip brought new learning, new circumstances, and new solutions rising out of successes and failures.

I was gone for 20 out of 45 days. The successes and failures within those days empower me for future travel, and that feels like a new accomplishment.

Each failure contributes to success, and each success includes failure. And, this is true — travel or not.

Reprioritizing Exercise: Shadow Boxing to Find My Strength

Shadow Boxing: Last week, I bribed myself to lift weights by thinking of the guilt-free social media time that I got between sets. This is one of the many mindsets I use to get myself to the gym when I do not feel like going. Looking ahead, I need to strength train and break a sweat more often than occasionally. The feeling that comes with exercise consistency motivates me in setting upcoming goals.

My struggle with getting enough exercise and spending too much sedentary time has emerged as a common theme in my life amidst these major changes.

I have shared this struggle on my Instagram and Facebook feed as I have tried to regain an elusive sense of balance.

I feel best when I make a big rock out of a combination of cardio, strength training, and movement in my life.

But, over the past few weeks, all of these forms of exercise became small or nonexistent rocks.

Looking back at my schedule, I have lifted weights about once a week, and I have broken a sweat about once every ten days.

All things considered, my exercise and lack of exercise have been both successes and failures, failures and successes.

What concerns me most is this: the longer I went without consistent exercise, the more I felt the gravitational pull of inaction taking over my life.

This feeling seduces me in unwelcome ways, a predator threatening long-term success.

The time has come to break this all-too-familiar pattern and make consistent exercise a big rock again.

While general movement is a powerful strategy, I have also learned that strength training and breaking a sweat hold even more power for my self-empowerment.

Time to get back in action.

Transforming my shadows means that food and exercise work together to create the best version of myself. And, this is the largest rock of all.