Choose Your Battlefield

There’s an old saying about picking and choosing your battles carefully.

Another element of this is deciding where to fight the battles you choose.

In his book, UNSCRIPTED, MJ DeMarco uses the example of the fight to lose weight.

Most people, when they think of this “battle”, think that the fight is won in the kitchen.

That is, you go into the kitchen and internally war with yourself over whether to make a salad or microwave a burrito; or you go into your pantry and fight with the choice to eat raisins or potato chips (which are both unhealthy, by the way).

DeMarco argues that this is the wrong battlefield - that it’s too late in the fight to make an effective decision consistently.

Instead of the kitchen, DeMarco suggests that the “real battlefield” in the fight to lose weight is found at the grocery store.

Basically, the thinking goes, if you don’t have unhealthy stuff in your fridge/pantry/cellar/etc., then you can’t eat poorly, even if you wanted to.

Of course, you could always order food delivered or hop in the car and hit up the drive-through.

But the point is that it’s more convenient for you to just eat the healthy food that’s in your house, tipping the odds over time that you’ll just suck it up and eat some gosh darn kale.

Naturally, as I write this, I find myself scraping the bottom of a bag of sugary-sweet kettle corn that I just should not have bought. Ever.

Ever!

See? Just because you know better doesn’t mean you always do better.

Actions count more than knowledge, and consistent action is wisdom incarnate.

Let your consistent actions win the battle for you.

But make sure to choose the right battlefield first.