One Post-It note at a time

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning - Oprah Winfrey

So I have these big goals of living a wildly happy life and losing my compulsive eating weight. But I have to live each day moving ever closer to those goals. It can be a struggle to fight through the old thought patterns and create new ones.

Often I lose a battle in a split second. I might intend to only eat when significantly hungry, but the next moment I’m gnawing away on a chocolate bunny. I’m more successful when I can capture the thought that would drag me down and work through it.

One of the best ways for me to work through these short-term issues is to write them down. However, I can’t carry a journal around with me all the time, nor can I carry around the internets so I can post to this blog (I am not made of money, and my company has not seen fit to give me a Blackberry). Therefore I resort to the tried and true Post-It notes.

By the way, did you know they were invented by a 3M engineer and a 3M scientist? First was a failure, the newly invented glue didn’t stick well enough. Second came the problem, because the engineer’s bookmarks would fall out of his hymnal. Apply a little “bad” glue, and suddenly you’ve created a new billion dollar market.

Anyway, I use Post-Its for my in-the-moment analysis. I will feel stress, write down the problem, analyze solutions, make a choice, throw the Post-It away. Throwaway therapy, I call it. I use like 4 pads a month. Heehee.