ALL OR NOTHING

Fingertips prickling. Dead arm. It feels like I’m being branded. Sweat. Keep calm. Don’t focus on the pain. This moment is temporary. All moments are. Keep your mind on the result. The beautiful artwork. It is mine forever. It is permanent.

ALL

Several hours under the needle is short amount of time to spend on something that is on your body permanently. That moment in the tattoo studio is a transitory period between what was and what will be. The skin underneath it forever changed. The moment is painful. The moment is life-changing.

You make one decision to brand your skin and it’s there. It’s immediately visible. Once you have a tattoo, the decision is done. They are a part of your body. You are them. They are you.

I think of tattoos as works of art done by talented artists I am grateful to have found. My tattoos represent my interests, ideas, or viewpoints. They are fully me. They are what I choose my body to look like. To represent. To convey. To enjoy. They can never be taken away from me. They will fade, perhaps lose their luster over time, but I’ll always have them. They are permanent, they are all.

NOTHING

I like tattoos because they are certain. They clearly reflect a choice I made once upon a time. Wellness on the other hand requires many daily choices. It is constant. The choice to be active or not, the choice to be conscientious about your consumption of food of media, the choice on who you surround yourself with, the choices you make to curate your home environment. All of these choices can be overwhelming. They can paralyze. They can stop us from achieving anything or trying anything new or from changing our routines. The many choices we have in one day can make us say ‘fuck it, why bother’. Choice overload can can lead to nothing, to inaction, to accept the status-quo in fears of doing something wrong or looking stupid.

ALL OR NOTHING?

You don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to be perfect. You won’t be able to perfectly follow your new diet or your new workout routine right away. You will feel unmotivated at times, maybe even most of the time. But the point is not to do things perfectly. Not to crush it every time. Not even to meet a goal by a certain time. The point is to build a habit. To do SOMETHING instead of nothing. To train your mind to view wellness as a necessity, as an essential part of your life. Give yourself breaks when you need them but always remember the purpose - to build a lifelong habit. That means being flexible. That means rejecting the idea that it’s all or nothing.

BE FLEXIBLE

Your 30% at the gym is better than 0% by not showing up. Your 12 mile long run that was scheduled turned to a 30 min home yoga session due to the 2 feet of snow is not a failure. It is a flexible alternative. If a work meeting ran long and your gym is closing early, making it for a 30 minute workout instead of your usual 1 hour will make you feel a sense of pride for persevering. Afterwards, focus on what you accomplished, not what you missed out on.

Remember, it took years for you to build the habits you currently have. It will take YEARS for you to develop new lifelong habits. Being consistently active will take years. To build this habit means being flexible. Call upon this flexibility when it feels like the universe has a target on your back. When you forget your gym bag at home or your gym is unexpectedly closed because of a pipe break. Remember that SOMETHING is better than NOTHING. Say this to yourself when you are met with a life challenge that may prevent you from being active or keep you from your practice.

ACCEPT & FORGIVE

Tattoos are permanently branded. They are easy in the grand scheme of my life. I sit through several hours of pain for a lifelong, beautiful permanent piece of art on my body. It was one decision that I made that is immediately visible. The ink representing a clear image I had in my head.

Our bodies on the other hand are not the culmination of a singular decision. They reflect back at us millions of decisions we’ve made over time and millions of decisions that were made for us. Our scars, our stretch marks we did not choose. Weight gain or loss from depression or other mental problems may be clearly evident when we see ourselves in the mirror. We have to forgive ourselves for past bouts of self-destruction that we can see in our reflections. We have to learn to accept our appearance because a lot of it we could not control.

MANTRA

I choose the design and placement of the artificial pigment that’s needled into my epidermis. I let go of the negative self-talk regarding my body because I understand that some of what is reflected back at me from the mirror was beyond my control. However, I will do my best. I will nurture a habit of keeping myself well, to care for myself I must remember this.

Its NOT all or nothing.

Doing something is better than nothing.

Be flexible.

Feel free to use these mantras on your journey to be well or develop your own.