One Day at a Time

I have decided to become more authentic. I want to become my authentic self, eat authentic or real foods, have an authentic home, one that truly represents myself, my family, our values, and is not distracting and full of clutter that obscures what we are really about, or what I want us to be about! :) As I tell my husband about my ideas, my many many ideas, he cautions me to only try to make one change at a time. He has seen this before.... "Honey, I read an article today and we are not drinking soda anymore, also we are going to practice yoga everyday, learn to meditate, and become vegan." Two days later: "Guess what, I just found an article that says diet soda is mostly water anyway.....and grass fed beef is healthy.....and maybe we should become runners!" Not only am I easily swayed by things I read, and then easily swayed back the other way by an equally convincing article with the opposite point of view, my commitment is often lacking and even if I can't find a single article that says multiple servings of chocolate a day is perfectly healthy, I rarely make it past day three on any new plan. I think part of the reason I often fail or change my mind or find yet another new, different, and certainly better plan, is because I'm always trying to follow someone else's plan. It has never come from me. And now it is time for a change, but this time I'm hoping things will go differently for me. I'm hoping to take everything I've learned, and weight it against what I know about myself, and what I know deep down to be true, despite the abundance evidence to the contrary. For example, I have read countless articles claiming that artificial sweeteners are perfectly fine, the body doesn't absorb them anyway, so it doesn't matter that they are made out of metals, chemicals, and even poisons like arsenic. I know better if I just look inside myself. I also know that I will never give up sugar completely, so to be authentic, I'm going to include real sugar, on rare occasions, into my diet, rather than having artificial sugar everyday, or never having anything sweet again! As I have always known, moderation is the key. My many ideas and desires include 1. eating whole, real foods 2. getting rid of anything we don't need or love in our home 3. deliberately creating a welcoming and comfortable home environment 4. exercising regularly 5. finding peacefulness and thankfulness everyday 6. guiding our children to become healthy and whole adults 7. taking time for ourselves as individuals 8. pursuing our passions 9. living life more simply 10. taking better care of our environment These are not in order of importance, just in the order in which they popped into my head. They are all important and I want to achieve them all, but I think my husband is right that they will not all be accomplished right away. So I'm going to start by not bringing anything new into our home that does not meet my new criteria. And I'm going to slowly take stock of what we already own, and let is go if it does not fit the new vision. We'll see where this takes us, but it is nice to identify my goals and feel like I'm starting to move towards them.