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“Tell me about your eating patterns: What’s already healthy, and where is there room for improvement?”
In the last few years, I have found this to be the most agreeable way to start the conversation with patients about nutrition habits. We get defensive about our eating–so fascinating! Behavior change is complex; we all have our hangups, barriers, and motivators, and they all vary with context, always in flux, which can be so frustrating.
Starting from a strengths perspective, looking at what we do well–where our actions already align with our values and goals–frames habit change as taking the next step on an existing path of progress, rather than as self-judgment and remediation. It invites us to approach self-improvement with curiosity, creativity, and experimentation. When I had this idea of already good/could be better a week ago, I knew it had some connection to my book, and now I see it clearly. SO exciting! All of this inner work–the doing and writing about it–these last 8.5 years, has been in service of the Big Fat Hairy Project (BFHP) that could possibly come to fruition in the now foreseeable future… Wow.
This year, I will use NaBloPoMo as a writing lab of sorts. I will try a new challenge of setting 30 public prompts in advance. This will provide both constraint and freedom–oooo, fun–or not, we shall see! I will play around more with poetry, maybe? Storytelling? Resource lists? By the end of the month I want to feel joy, accomplishment, and wonder, having learned more about my process and evolved it a little, and produced some posts worth sharing and referencing. I will do my best to leash my inner critic, muzzle but not blindfold it, honor its innate purpose while keeping it in a corner, out of reach from my writing implements. I give myself permission to interpret my prompts broadly and respond in kind. And who knows, maybe after 30 days of (near) daily writing, I will have established an actual book writing habit!
I intend to approach each topic below from both a personal and a collective perspective. What’s already good about my own sleep, for instance, and also our sleep as a society? What could be better for me, and what would a system look like that facilitates optimal sleep for a population? Oooo, this could be cool. I often think vaguely, obtusely, in this individual/collective mindset, but this may be the first time I apply it to 30 topics in a row, directly and explicitly. Ohmygosh, how exciting.
Let’s see what happens, eh? Giddy up!
NaBloPoMo 2023 Prompts:
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Nutrition
- Stress management
- Relationships
- Reading
- Honesty
- Mindfulness
- Self-Compassion
- Polarity management
- Forgiveness
- Social media
- Integrity
- Accountability
- Balance
- Perspective
- Leadership
- Presence
- Romance
- Love
- Judgment
- Commitment
- Gratitude
- Flexibility
- Acceptance
- Creativity
- Education
- Politics
- Writing
- Debrief