I cannot stress enough the importance of getting it right. Anything that is going to be foundational in your life needs to be rock solid. It must become your automatic ‘go to’ response, no thinking required. For most of us, that is going to take considerable time. Unfortunately, we often underestimate just how much time it will take us to make lasting change. We try to accomplish too much too soon, and in doing so we shortchange ourselves and fail to meet our challenge.

At my ripe old age—perhpas a little wisdom does come with age!—I have decided that I need to concentrate on less things when I am undertaking lifestyle change. Well, exactly one thing. I need to do whatever it takes to make one change happen and give it a big push—all my energy—at the start, followed by enough energy to keep it in a holding pattern until it becomes so entrenched that I don’t have to think about it any more. If it’s to stop drinking, I concentrate even more thought and effort on my project than I think it could possibly need. I do whatever it takes. For a while I stop going where there are too many temptations. I find, and stick to, a substitute drink, whether it’s nonalcoholic wine or soda water or tonic water. If there is alcohol still in the house, it just needs to not be in my ‘go to’ place. That’s now the home of the substitute. Then, over time, I wean myself off the substitute. The substitute’s job is just to be there as the ritual while I break the alcohol’s perceived hold.

It might seem it takes a long time to accomplish, but that’s my project for six or seven months before a new challenge is undertaken. I am now rock solid in my thoughts, my habits, my actions. I have succeeded, this time, where I have failed many times before by arrogantly wanting it all to happen by magic; by being much too impatient and failing to take into account the energy required for lasting change. And once the lasting change has been accomplished, almost no energy is required again, so in the long run you have succeeded instead of failing again and again.

And surely that’s worth the time and effort you have invested.

Do you remember the idea that when there is a problem, you need to find a workable solution and then you put all your energy into the solution and never, ever think about the problem again?

I can’t recall who said it first, but it was surely good advice. Do everything you can to find a  solution and then keep your head turned that way. We keep sliding back into worrying the problem like a dog with a bone. Instead, we need to quietly and confidently look forward.

The less you ‘worry the thought’, the easier it becomes to stick to whatever decision you made that will take you to the solution or will help you live the solution. Instead of talking yourself into being unhappy with dieting (or your new liefstyle habits or whatever you want to call it), realise that you’ve plumbed the depths of that problem—probably more than once—and you now need think only of the nuts and bolts of the solution.

So instead of getting caught up in thoughts like “I hate dieting,” “I wish I could eat that, and,”I want sweeties (now!)”, and any other thought that runs through your head at moments like these, you watch each thought as it arises. Look at the thought without the emotion that you have invested in it until now. The less self-talk you indulge around that thought, the better. Instead of talking yourself into being unhappy with your new diet, you simply say, “That’s the way it is now, and it’s a good thing,” and move on. Or if your automatic thinking process comes up with, “I usually have chocolate at this time of day,” now you respond to that thought with the happy realisation that “Luckily I don’t do that any more.”

You don’t  deny that you had thoughts of the lolly bottle. You definitely don’t venture into “Should I or shouldn’t I?”or “Just one wouldn’t hurt” territory. You simply acknowledge that the thought has occurred and you are doing nothing about it because you have already moved on to the solution, even if that pesky little thought hasn’t realised it yet.

Eventually your thoughts will catch up with your actions. If you eat three meals and two snacks a day, that’s when you’ll think about food. That, along with shopping and preparation time. But the preoccupation with having something in your mouth all the time will be gone. Simple. Not easy, but simple.

So that’s five times a day you think about food. If you can get your snacks and meals sorted so you know what you’re having, or have a shortlist from which to choose (for which you have the ingredients, naturally), it’s even easier. If you choose to eat less often (for example if you don’t snack or you follow the intermittent fasting principle), even more thought power can be transferred to simply living your life instead of thinking about food. But for the moment, let’s say five times a day, to keep the blood sugar levels on an even keel and ease into this solution.

So food becomes a pleasant part of the day, but not your master. You think about it when it’s time to prepare and to eat, not every waking moment of every day. You consume it; it doesn’t consume you.

Every step we take is a step in a direction. Very few steps march in place, so it makes sense that the decisions we make on a daily, even moment-by-moment basis, are leading us somewhere.

It is said nowadays that failure happens on the way to success. But this is only true when we learn that our failures show us what not to do in the future. If we keep walking down the same road, how can we expect a different result?

Once you know that your steps are going the wrong way, you mightn’t know what to do—but you definitely know what not to do. You then choose to try something different, to go another way.

The fact that many of us seem to have a working failure model we never stray from has very little to do with our intelligence. We’re often not bringing our intelligence into play at all! Why do we keep compounding our less-than-successful actions with even more of the same ilk, choosing activities that are of no help to us or our dearest wishes? Because it’s easier. It’s part of our comfort zone. It’s mindlessly following a well trodden path. But it’s not the path that in our hearts we want to take. We all want to feel that we can be successful in some way.

I call it the failure model because to my mind that makes it sound more like something that can be trialled and changed. We do not need to see ourselves as slaves to our past habits and ways.

If the way we respond to our partner in difficult moments does not have the kind of resolution we would like, why do we keep reacting in the same way and saying the same things? If the food we eat makes us fat and unheallthy, why don’t we simply make a few changes and then never go back to the old way?

The way I try to see it these days is that what I am doing in this moment, of itself, will not make me fail or succeed. It is just one tiny action. But our whole lives are made up of moments, of tiny actions, and it is the decisions we make during those moments—this moment—that governs our eventual destination. So the perverse enjoyment we get from snapping back at our partner is shortlived and sends us down the wrong path. Maybe one icecream won’t hurt, but if it’s one icecream on the hour, every hour, it leads us down a very rocky road. Little actions, performed consistently over time, can have amazing results. And whether the result is good or bad depends on the quality of that one little action carried out over and over again.

Each step is leading somewhere. If we can remember that, and make a more considered choice in even the small actions that make up the minutiae of our day, we can indeed use the failure model as a stepping stone to success.

The problem many of us have is that we get stuck at the place which is really only the starting line. We go on a diet but slide back and have to start again. We clean up the house but let it descend into chaos and have to do it over. The main difficulty, in my opinion, is that these are the most difficult parts of the exercise. These are the hard yards. Do the hard yards, we are told. And we do. Over and over again.

We need to change. The hard yards should only need to be done once. Done once, and done well. Drinking too much? Give it up altogether. Yes, it might be hard. You might believe you can’t do it. Do it anyway. Then don’t go back to drinking and you won’t ever have to do those hard yards again. You will be over the hump. On the other side. Free of those particular hard yards forevermore.

Of course, it’s not that easy for most of us and we slip back to the starting line with a lot of our worst habits. When you stop smoking, the hardest time is the first week. Why go back to it and continually have to accomplish the first week all over again? Why not say, I’ve done those hard yards, then enjoy the easier ride of going onward and upward?

This works with so many things. Even sugar. Ubiquitous, addictive and legal. No wonder it has such strength over some of us. But once the chains are weakened, we are free to go. We get to choose. Leave now, even though it might be challenging to do so, or go back to do the hard yards all over again. The further away we get are from the starting line, the easier it is. It’s only when we go backwards that we falter.

I was reading the other day about a young man who managed to travel without luggage. He had one of those Scottevests that allowed him to put all his requirements in his pockets. When I go away, I need a bus to take all the things our little family will need!

All the stuff I surround myself with in life is heavy—physically, and increasingly emotionally. As I look around my home, I wonder how any one person can need what surely amounts to tonnes of possessions. Even if you discount the furniture, I have an inordinate amount of possessions and I know that not all of them add to my quality of life. It would be interesting to look at this from an social anthropologist’s point of view, but of course I’m not educated in that field and am never likely to be.

When you read what decluttering gurus have to say, it’s clear that I’m doing it all wrong. I still have some clothes from my childhood as well as those that fit every iteration of weight I have been for the past 10 or 15 years. I have no intention of getting rid of them, although I could lighten my load. A little. I suppose.

The kitchen and pantry don’t exactly groan under the weight, but they are filled with many more dishes and utensils than are required. The kitchen is probably not large according to today’s gigantic proportions, but the pantry is huge and the items still manage to spill out onto the floor instead of containing themselves to the shelves. The truth is that as the person who prepares the food in the household, I am in charge of the number of things in that room and I have allowed the space to become somewhat overwhelming. I say ‘somewhat’ because I do make attempts from time to time to rein in the monster.

I have come to the conclusion that the only way to successfully see how much is too much is to assiduously put like things with like. So all my clothes and shoes, with the exception of those in my bedside set of drawers, are in one place. It’s a pretty cluttered look and I could easily fix it by removing the clothes and shoes I don’t wear on a day-to-day basis and packing them away somewhere else. But I have spent quite a lot of time gathering everything to the same spot because I think that way I will be able to teach my eyes and my heart the concept of enough. At the moment, packed close, they silently and compellingly spell out ‘too much’.

I think the reason I am so aware of this is that I want to change. I want to live lighter, and certainly I am not adding to the weight anymore. The only trouble is, most of the time I’d rather read about it or even write about it than actually do it.

There is something addictive about listening to how other people ‘do’ health. As a member of FMTV, I view all kinds of videos by all kinds of experts … experts who sometimes have differing opinions right down to the basics.

It is a great service and I’m sure I have learned a lot. What I have not done is put it into practice. There is a seething morass of conflicting ideas swirling around my being.

I can spend hours looking up recipes, reading blogs by eminent doctors and nutritionists who, even if they’re not perfectly right (how can they all be?), really know their stuff.

But there comes a time when all this has to stop. When you have to put your available energy into the actual doing, rather than looking at it all as an outsider, albeit with the best of intentions. So for a little while I am calling a moratorium on new information, new recipes, new ideas. I don’t know it all, but for the moment I know enough. Enough to make a difference to my own health and that of  those I love. Enough to make a start and keep the momentum going. Enough to be going on with.

So I am going to resist the addictive behaviour of always looking for the expert who is perfectly right, the recipe that has all the right ingredients and will work to perfection every time, the information that will easily help me to make better decisions.

Sometimes it’s not all that easy. That’s why you have to put your new energy into it. I call it ‘new’ because the energy you need for some things is unadulterated, never-been-used-before stuff. Not watered down from reading other people’s thoughts and experiencing life secondhand through them.

I suppose that also means this is now not a weekly column because the bit of energy I put into talking about health here, I need to put into doing. Not so much talking, writing, wishing, wondering. Doing. Choosing the one verb with the most ability to help make vibrant health a reality. Doing that leads to being—a very powerful state.

I have read a lot. I have talked a lot. The information swirling around in my head will refine itself if I give it a rest from new input. Inside, I have all the knowledge I need—perhaps even considerably more than I truly require—and now it is time to allow it to settle and separate out into something that makes perfect sense to me. In doing so it will become powerful in a way that resonates deeply with me and changes both my inward and outward life.

I remember thinking once that I should write a book on simplifying. (Maybe it was going to help me to actually do it.) I was going to call it—wait for it—decomplication. I think that’s a sad reflection of both my state of mind and my sense of humour!

But the truth is, we do lead complicated lives. As the requirement for hunting and gathering food fades further and further into the mists of our past, we fill our lives with a great deal of complication. The tools we use, the way we prepare food, the sophisticated technology we employ in the name of being entertained. We are drowning in complication.

When mankind had to spend a bigger part of his day searching out food—and when a breadmaker didn’t knead dough for him or an oven ‘ping’ when the meal was cooked (we won’t even go into the fact that many people don’t even do that much anymore)—he was more grounded. We are a civilisation of distractions and we have largely lost the ability to stick to one task for a length of time. Back then, food preparation was simple but time consuming. Now, we have increasingly complex ways to save that same time. But we use our saved time on increasingly isolating activities—texting people instead of talking to them face to face, checking social media where other people lie about how great their lives are and make us feel failures because we don’t lie enough about our own. We bombard ourselves with more, yet increasingly trivial, information. Yes, we are living complicated but strangely unsatisfying lives.

I think that’s probably why I was keen on the idea of using the very complicated (and made-up) word, decomplication. The prefix gives us the key. We somehow need to remove or reverse that complication. Just saying, let’s simplify our lives, doesn’t give us any idea for how to start. Understanding that we need to deduct something makes us aware that we need to learn to edit our lives—sift out the extraneous, the dull, the uninspiring.

I often feel a bit of a failure for the things I can’t do. I feel I have to keep up, at least to some degree. How much simpler my life would be if I lived it according to well-thought-out values and didn’t let the increasingly inane noise of society affect my decisions.

What we believe is our version of reality. It is not reality, and yet it is for us. False, yet true. Many of us live our whole lives not questioning this ‘reality’. It’s just part of our thought system therefore it is true.

I always come back to the concept of addiction here—addiction in general and today I’m going to pick on sugar in particular. By now we’ve all heard that sugar lights up your precortal blah blah blah just like cocaine. I don’t know how cocaine does it, but I’m intimately aware of sugar’s insidious hold. And here’s the thing. It doesn’t even feel good, although maybe it did back in the early days. It’s simply the new normal and you feel pretty blah without it.

But stop right there. That is the thought commanding the addiction. If I were out in the desert and could not get hold of sugar, I would live without it. My body would habituate to a new norm, just like it has done in the past.

The problem with sugar is that you can slip lollies into your mouth all day without the world really noticing, so it can become a silent but powerful monster. The sugar fix is not as obvious as chainsmoking or drinking to excess (apart from all the weight around your middle and the tendency towards diabetes).

Now, consider this. If I didn’t think the thought that I wanted a sweetie every five minutes, I would probably be free of the whole circus pretty quickly. Perhaps I would be uncomfortable as my body coped with the change. It might take three days of occasional discomfort. It might take three weeks. The point is that none of that would kill me.

With anything else I’ve ever tried ‘giving up’, I’ve always succeeded more easily with a substitute. With sugar, the substitute is worse for you than the sugar, but perhaps for just a little while that is okay. Of course, you don’t need a substitute. Not having something any more is easy. You simply withdraw yourself from it. But after so many years of being conditioned to think a certain way it is always easier to follow the rut that thinking the same way has worn in our brains. This-synapse-automatically-fires-that-one type of thing. I think that’s why I find substitution so successful. Give up the addiction while keeping the habit. Reaching for something automatically doesn’t derail the whole process.

But in the end we do not need to think any of these thoughts. They will just go away by themselves once we have really studied them to see what they are and how they work. Our thoughts limit us. They can keep us slaves. But one day they can simply disappear. And on that day, we will be free from all addictions.

Today was one of those mornings that started tentatively. We rose in the dark, as we have been doing lately. Hello, crisp autumn weather. It has been autumn for nearly two months but today really felt like the season had finally arrived. Frost had settled on the tops of our vehicles but hadn’t made it to the ground, where dew drenched the still-green grass. The sun, when it came, seemed reluctant. No clear sunrise this morning. Obscured by mist, the sun was a refracted blur of silver whiteness, its golden arms bleached to monochrome light.

The horse was early for his morning hay and his breath was visible as steamy warmth. He would have looked warhorse-like except that his round pony shape doesn’t lend itself to such whimsical  flights of fancy. I savoured the picture he made. His head was backlit and his pricked ears were drawn sharply against the ghostly background.

An hour later, it all looked quite different. The mist had burned off. The horse had wandered away. The business of the day had begun.

The point of this, for me, is that even a morning that looks reluctant to start still goes through the motions and manages to rev up some hours later as a beautiful autumn day. I must do the same. I must begin the first major task of the day and work methodically through the list of jobs so that by nightfall all is accomplished. When I become distracted by minutiae, I will bring myself gently back to the task at hand. My head will clear. I will become focussed and attentive. No matter how slowly I start, I can make this a good day.

I know I’ve said this before, but in my opinion mindset is even more important than having a great deal of knowledge. When you have the right mindset, everything’s easier. You’re not fighting with yourself. Decisions have more glue.

Without having the right mindset and exercising it, I can spend all day eating chocolate at my computer and reading other people’s information about diet, health, a good life. I can get steadily fatter and unhealthier while reading the best information in the world. So knowledge is only power when it’s acted on in the right way. You can have all the best information of the day at your fingertips but if you don’t use that knowledge, put it into practice—live it, it’s worth very little.

Putting anything into practice can have its difficulties. But one day when you wake up with even an inkling of the right mindset, put aside everything you possibly can and work with that little gem. Its value is above rubies!

Yesterday I woke up with that inkling. As gemstones go, it was a fairly small ruby … but it was there, glinting in the darkness. I made cheese/ham and salad sandwiches and packed fruit and biscuits for the one who has to be at work by 6.30am and while the salad container was out I made two plates of salad for the two of us who eat lunch at home. While I was in the kitchen—and before doing anything else with my day—I cooked up mince in the frying pan with a little tomato paste and poached a big chicken breast. I took a pear and a banana in with me to my office and made a solemn promise I wouldn’t eat any chocolate that morning. Don’t laugh. I often have chocolate for breakfast. While in the kitchen I had made a fruit and spinach smoothie with some extra goodies in it so I  had that for breakfast while sitting at my desk. This is never enough for me (hence the huge blocks of chocolate lurking in the office) so I had the banana as well. For morning tea I toasted a piece of essene bread instead of chocolate or biscuits. Later in the day after a lunch of salad with a sprinkling of poached chicken, I had a small apple instead of chocolate.  And then I ate some chocolate. But at least I’d stemmed the chocolate tide a little by doing without it in the morning. My eating choices were pretty good apart from the chocolate (still a lot by other people’s standards, but good for me), a glass of non-alcoholic wine and a hot chocolate drink at bedtime.

Bugger perfect. Better is what I’m looking for. And having easy choices for ‘better’ is a great way to go. If you have your healthy options made, or at least started, it seems much easier to follow through. But I could just as easily just toddled back to bed for that hour I spent in the kitchen and let my little ruby sink into oblivion. It was only a tiny feeling, after all. How much good could it possibly do? I could have had that fleeting feeling and ignored it because chocolate is a lot easier to eat than the healthy options I did manage to include.

These ruby experiences can start out as just moments, but they have a certain energy that can help carry you through times when your negativity or cravings usually win out. When you find a little ruby, use it. Polish it, admire it, stroke it. Do whatever you can to keep it right in front of you so it can help you to make some of the best decisions of your life … and carry them through.