Mantra

I'm a wee bit embarrassed to tell ya'll my mantra, because it's kind of pathetic. But it's helped me a lot this past week--I've been crazy productive and I'm feeling gooood.

It all started out a few weeks ago with I approached Brock with a proposition. I love the guy, but sometimes his humor is a little too Wayne's World.  After a particularly "That's what she said!"-heavy day, I plopped onto the bed and said "Honey, I just want to feel like I'm married to an adult. Could we lighten up on the junior high jokes?"

And that's exactly what Brock did. Things were going along just peachy until the tables turned.

The sink was full of dirty dishes, and it was my turn to wash them. "I'll do it later tonight, don't worry!" I assured Brock. But, you know, life came up. And when I say "life" I mean The Internet. Before I knew it, it was 11:30pm. Brock walked into the kitchen and looked at the sink.

"Lovey, you forgot."

At that moment, a light bulb went off in my brain. Did I seriously not have the self-control to pull myself away from what I wanted to do? How did I let an entire evening pass by without accomplishing the one chore on my list? Why did I need Brock policing me? I'm sure he wants to feel like a husband, not a parent. Needless to say, I felt pretty stupid. 

Hence, my mantra: "I am an adult."

I say this to myself (sometimes outloud...) whenever I have to do something I don't "feel like" doing. Because that is the essence of adulthood--putting work before play and realizing that life isn't about you and what you want to do. This mantra has helped me with . . . 

• Making myself go to bed at a decent hour
• Not hitting the snooze button in the morning
• Consistent scripture study
• Waking up 90 minutes earlier every day to get ahead on my homework
• Writing down weekly goals and actually doing them
• Pulling myself away from mindless interneting
• Assessing issues I'm having with language-learning and actually fixing them. (Even if this means reading Arabic newspapers for five hours on one particular day.)
• Setting a timer for myself as I set out to accomplish 15-minutes tasks 

I have been a productivity MACHINE this week, I tell you! It's this awesome self-perpetuating cycle: I feel so good when I act like an adult that it makes me want to act like one ALL THE TIME!!!!!!

My mantra is a reminder that I have the self-control to make myself do lame things (or at least I should). It's so easy to excuse your laziness by saying "Oh, I'm just a procrastinator." But really, isn't procrastination just a lack of self-control? This was the epiphany I had as I looked sheepishly at that sink of dirty dishes.

For whatever reason, "I have no self-control" sounds a lot worse than "I'm a procrastinator." 

"I'm an adult"  is a great way to shame yourself into acting like one. Because if you tell that to yourself and then display a lack of self-control, you'll feel so stupid that you'll eventually succumb to self-pressure in a desperate attempt to salvage your pride. 

I'm sure there's a more eloquent explanation, but you get the idea. 

So that's my mantra. Before you know it, I'll be exercising, eating vegetables, and taking vitamins.