Describe what your life will be like in 3 years if you continue to allow your bad habits to stand in the way.

On the cusp of a half century, I’ll do what I always do, I’ll review my life and decide I need to do something big, something memorable. Because nothing in review is ever enough. I wanted to write about eating too many carbs or drinking too many beers, and those do have real consequences I can talk about, don’t get me wrong, but they are symptomatic of something far deeper and much more damaging.

If I follow the root past the inability to celebrate accomplishments, or not feeling compliments, I find the spring waters of my being and also a dam, built and reinforced over the years. That dam is occupied by my inner critic who is fueled by fear and anxiety. She feeds off of the slightest hesitation, and drinks from the head waters of my spirit. She is strong and good at her job.

If I lose my vigilance, if I stop paying attention, it is easy for me to think that my lack of motivation is just one too many cookies in a time of crisis, but it isn’t. It is the call from deep within trying to protect me from a made up world within my head. And her holler is both bone shaking and a whisper. She throws run-on sentences full of cruelty saved only for the fiercest of villains, but through the cacophony, the real arrow pierces, “you are not and never will be enough.”

Even typing it here seems ridiculous. It is a lie, and it isn’t true, but if I don’t keep reminding myself it is a lie and counter those messages with love and compassion, I am worn out and beat down within days. Bad habits are symptoms, and if I pay attention, maybe on the cusp of 50, I will do something big, something memorable like do yoga consistently for a week, or meditate on the regular, maybe drink more water and take a run. And maybe the call I hear will be from waters rushing through a weakened dam.