something vs. nothing.

Genius V-Day B-Day cookies by the lovely Kris.

V-Day B-Day Week continues! The cookie swapping at Saturday's party surpassed any and all of my gustatory expectations. And yes, perhaps it was a bit of a cheat to eat cookies for dinner, but hey, we've been juicing like crazy lately, so something had to be done to balance out all that healthiness.

Part of the spread.

Speaking of cheating, I decided over the weekend that cheating can sometimes be good. I was thinking of the mini-goals (rather than sweeping resolutions) I set for myself in January: to develop a bedtime routine, to begin each morning with an intention, to make the bed, and to stop reading so many news stories.

I absolutely did not stick to each of those each and every day. But I did notice myself not doing them, which is more awareness than I had before. Habitually, I am an all or nothing person, as in I will make the bed perfectly so that it is photoshoot-ready seven days a week or else it is not worth ever bothering to make the bed at all. This kind of thinking has held me back so many times I can't even count. It's kept me glued to the couch when my body ached for movement, it's kept me surrounded with clutter when all I want is calm and order. I've talked before about not doing yoga at all if I can't commit to at least 4 90-minute classes in a studio a week, because otherwise I feel like I'm not doing it well anyways. Even the small goal of going to one class per week, which is the first logical step towards getting there more often, is lambasted in my head because one class a week isn't going to make a difference. Or so I think. Rather, or so some part of me thinks. Something is not better than nothing; something is less than or equal to nothing.

When we talked about bedtime routines last month, I had created a multi-step process for winding myself down in the evenings, and some nights I completely ignored every single step, and some nights I followed it to a T. But back to cheating. This weekend, I thought about how it doesn't have to be all or nothing. If I'm too tired to use the Clarisonic to wash my face and use toner and moisturize, that doesn't mean there's nothing I can do for my skin before bed-- last night I used one of those disposable cleaning towels. Is it ideal? No. But did it get my skin a little cleaner than it would have been than if I'd done nothing. Yes. And that's just a fact.

So I'm going to look for more chances to cheat in my life-- to uncomplicate those good-for-you things that I may not be up for every single time... so that eventually, the default setting in my head is that something is better than nothing. It doesn't have to be perfect or bust.  Have you come up with any ways to "cheat" in this sense?  I'm on the lookout for more.