Can I have a reset?

Do you ever just wish you had a reset button somewhere. A little red button that you could press, hold and reboot?

Over the last few days I’ve had this little squirmy, nagging need to reset somehow. There were things I’d slowly let slip over the last months. I had that familiar low grade, white noise of guilt in the background, the soft buzzing kind that you can mainly ignore. However, the buzz suddenly became louder and less of background noise. These ‘things’ had suddenly been bought into sharper focus. And as a result, I just felt a bit (a lot) ‘eugh’.

I remember being hit with a hefty library fine during my Psych training. I had a text book shoved under my bed somewhere, littered with scrawled post-it notes. I knew it was late, but I kept forgetting it, and then after a while I forgot about it alltogether. Months later the grumpy librarian told me of my unpaid fine. It hit me like a thunderbolt. It had escalated into something so costly without me even being aware.

I think that was the feeling I had last week. This thunderbolt feeling that the things I had let slide – namely nourishing my body with good food and water, had a cost. For months and months I have been grabbing sugary convenience foods and snacking on kids leftovers. Breakfast used to be my most enjoyed meal of the day, and yet now I shove half a banana down my throat along with two supersized latte chasers. Food had become perfunctory fuel to shut my body up from nagging hunger, an inconvenience. As for water, I only had to look at my fluro wee (sorry) to be reminded that I wasn’t even meeting my very basic needs.

For you, it might be exercise, or investing in healthy friendships. It might be opening up about things or getting outside. Sometimes it’s just the little things that we KNOW make the big difference, that get nudged down the list of priorities over time until they don’t exist at all. We think they are little, we think they seem insignificant, but the debt they build up when we let them slide can affect so many facets of our lives.

I started to eat crap, my standards shifted. You think that’s all that happened? No. My actions were giving me the message that I wasn’t worth the time to eat well, that I wasn’t worth a full meal but just scraps, leftovers and gobbled-down sugar highs. I was telling myself that my body’s basic needs were a hinderance. And as a result, my level of self-respect lessened and this just perpetuated the cycle.

We think the little things are the little things, but little by little, they have big affects.

I pressed the reset button.

Too often we wait to make change. We wait until we feel sick with self loathing, burdened with guilt, or can’t do up our favourite jeans We wait for Mondays, or summer holidays, or lent, or for when the New Year clock chimes 12. We delay making tweaks and changes until we are motivated by some sort of time landmark, or find ourselves in a messy heap on the floor wondering how we took it this far.

DON’T WAIT. Press the reset button now. Whether it’s 2am or 7pm. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Press the reset button now because you are worth not beating yourself up with guilt or self irritation. You are worth living without the droning buzz of the ‘I should be doing..’, the dragging guilt, the cycle of neglect and self-disrespect that drains your ability to be attentive to your own needs.

Your needs, your basic needs are where self-care is at. Sod the manicures and the indulgent bath oils, if you’re ignoring your basic needs for nutritionally beneficial food, for water, for company, to be heard, for comfort, for fresh air, THAT is where you need to begin. We want those we love to know that they are loveable. We want to teach our children that they are precious and worthy. Yet, we treat ourselves and our bodies like machines and huff when the warning light for rest, thirst, space or hunger comes on. Actions speak louder than even the most curated of words.

Press the button half way through a day if you need to. Every day if you need to.

For me, pressing the reset button meant having a long hot bath, shoving on a face mask. These seemingly insignificant things make me feel fresh and new, like a little baptism into change. It’s like my own personal ritual for new starts. As if I’m saying ‘hey, it’s okay, let’s start something different’. It’s about self forgiveness and having grace for yourself, instead of self-destructive pummeling yourself with guilt. I do this little ritual as often as I need to. Plus they are just a few of the little things that tell myself that if I’m worth clean hair, I’m worth a few extra glasses of water and feeding myself well. Then, I sat at my laptop and ordered a juicer before perusing the supermarket for a bounty of veg.

Funny thing – I started drinking more water. And as a result, not only did I start to pee more, I felt thirstier. How is it that I should feel thirstier when I’m meeting that need? And then I realised, it was my body believing and trusting that I would finally listen to it’s signals. I had been thirsty all along, it had just given up telling me.

Press that button.

Press reset.

Can you remember the Chaos Theory coined by Edward Lorenz? The belief that the tiny act of a butterfly flapping it’s wings can result in weather differences on the other side of the world. Think of these tweaks like that. You press the reset button. You make the tweaks. You think these are the little, simple things. They are not. They are seemingly small statements of value affecting everything. 

Celebrate your victories. Nobody needs to know what they are unless you want to tell them. They might be as simple as drinking 6 glasses of water instead of 2 or making your first fresh juice (heyaa), or it might be the act of stepping outside for the first time in days, dusting off the cross-trainer come clothes horse, unrolling the yoga mat, or picking up the phone to a friend. Celebrate them.

And hey. If things slip again.

Press reset.

And press it again.

No guilt necessary.