Act Like You’ve Been There Before

At 5:49pm my husband gave me the look. We both knew we had fifteen minutes before we needed to leave for his work party downtown and I was still getting kids settled/dawdling despite my parents being there to babysit. 

Two minutes to debate dresses, another few to make hair and face look like it wasn’t Tuesday at 9:30am and the last few to get a purse, shoes and some sort of jacket. No problem. Despite not having been out for a looooong time, I was heeding my own advice and acting like I’d been there before. You know, like going out was something I do on the reg and have a routine down pat to get out the door fast for all those cocktail parties and dinners I (don’t) regularly attend. 

One dress change and a several minutes later, I‘m downstairs trying to figure out some sort of sweater or scarf situation because it was freezing cold. My mom reminded me that I had to have a scarf or shawl somewhere. Right. Think, think, think. Yes, a basket in the coat closet had some fancy-ish scarves that would pass. See, I had been there before at some point!

Plan A….a favorite scarf from my London living days had minor holes from a moth. Ugh. 
Plan B…another scarf, same fate. My mom and I tried to make it work so the holes weren’t visible. Not happening. Damn you, moths. 
Plan C….my go-to black cashmere wrap had more holes than it had material. 
Moths, 3. Me, zero.
Hope you ate for months, moths! Note to self, buy more cedar closet hangers and use scarves more often. Or at least check your fancy bits periodically if the world shuts down again. 

My mom and I marched upstairs and managed to find a jacket that would work over the dress. Plan D, accepted. Nobody else knows this was Plan D. I kept reminding myself, act like you’ve been there before. You can pull this off looking like you hob nob with business people all the time and aren’t slinging macaroni, taxi driving, and breaking up minor fights every other night of the week. You’ve got this. 

I thought about this idea of acting like you’ve been there before in my yoga class last week, too. As my students settled into pigeon pose, I actually told them to NOT act like they’d been there before. Don’t go into autopilot and just assume that your body is going to be the same as it was last week or yesterday or last year. Pretend you’ve never been here before and see what happens. How does your body feel today? What does your body need right now? 

It would be a safe guess to say that you probably act like you’ve been there before when it comes to your food, too. You probably wake up and go on autopilot starting with breakfast. Maybe you grab cereal because it’s what you’ve eaten for years. I can’t tell you how many years I ate oatmeal for breakfast. Once I let go of dieting, I started eating A LOT of other things for breakfast. Why? Because I didn’t feel like I had to eat the one acceptable (in my own mind) thing and I wasn’t on autopilot mode and I actually started asking myself some really important questions.
WHAT WOULD TASTE GOOD TODAY?
What do I need and what would feel good? 
What is my body craving? 
Do I want something warm or cold? Chewy or smooth? 

If you have the luxury of having a choice when it comes to your food, don’t go on autopilot. 
Pause. 
Check in with your body. 
Ask yourself some questions. 
And just because having the perfect thing ready to eat at all times isn’t always accessible, remind yourself that every time you eat food, it doesn’t have to be the exact thing you crave. Eating plan B or C or D works, too. 

Sometimes it’s good to act like you haven’t been there before.
Where can you go off autopilot this week and stop to ask yourself what your body really needs?