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What a great year we have ahead!

I’ll be emailing you throughout the year, checking in, often talking about “Good Day Strategies” to help with weight loss and maintenance, but if this is bugging you, be sure to unsubscribe.

I did something super-smart about twenty years ago. 

I had survived a bad bout of depression in my first pregnancy in 2002 and began a long-game strategy that I called “Good Day Strategies.”

It was simple: On my “good days” I would strategically work on projects that would make my “bad days” a little easier.

I figured that if I did this over time, I would have fewer bad days and my bad days would simply get less bad.

It worked!

I made it through my second pregnancy in 2008 depression-free. I made it through a lot of ups and downs of raising both of my kids.

As I reflect back, I remember how it progressed over all of those years. Here are a few examples:

**** Hiking. I learned that I really did feel a lot better when I got out on a hike on a bad day. I was living in the mountains and so it was a natural option. I noticed that if I engaged with people on the trails, I felt better too, so I made a rule for myself: “Speak to at least one person when you’re out there.” (I discuss in this video while I was out on a hike on a “bad day” in 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78HNxQnlAJ4)

**** Eating. On those hikes, I also noticed that if I took a box of protein bars with me in the car, that I was likely to eat way too many of them. I made a rule to take nothing to eat with me on those adventures. There are no refrigerators or pantries out on that trail, so that worked out pretty well.

**** Plants. I was on five acres of property and planted scores of beneficial herbs over those twenty years: lavender to sooth, rosemary and sage to perk me up, and lemon balm to calm an anxious day.

**** Projects: I kept projects around that I enjoyed. I blended those herbs into handmade skincare. I fermented pine cones. I distilled elderflower.

I did a lot of great and crazy things that got me through tough times.

It was a slow but powerful march across time.

It’s been on my mind a lot lately because I am having to adapt the strategies as I spend time in another location for my injury recovery. But I don’t start completely from scratch today even though I am not on my mountain property: It’s all learning from yesterday to make tomorrow a little easier.

That’s what we need to do every single day: Establish a new little structure today to make tomorrow a little bit easier.

It’s a powerful strategy over time.

P.S.: There is no LIVE video in the Deep Den this week. I will catch you next week!

P.S. #2, Life Simplified: Here’s a great efficiency tool from this week’s newsletter sponsor.

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