Uptight. Rigid. These are two of the kinder words that have been used to describe me when I’m doing what I need to do to feel healthy. Then there’s the word folks at work tend to use with admiration. They call me disciplined.
Most of the time, what I feel isn’t disciplined. It’s desperate.
My life often feels like it is controlled by my watch and my phone. Little numbers that either keep me going or take the energy right out of me. They are streaks…the ones I’ve been able to maintain and the ones that take a mountain to restart.
If it’s important, I don’t stop. Because if I do, it could be years before I do it again. Whatever “it” is.
The power of streaks
I have a teenage son that’s often glued to his phone. There are times when I marvel at how he and his peers communicate. The one I never really understood was “streaks” on Snapchat.
He’d take random photos…could be of the top of his head, his feet, or a blur of the roadside as we’re driving. Didn’t matter what it was – the more random the better I suppose – and he’d send it to hundreds of people to maintain their streak. I guess the goal was to have relationships with really long streaks as a point of pride.
I still don’t get it. If I thought they were actually engaging, maybe. I could use an app that tells me it’s been too long since I reached out to so and so based on a goal to connect with them daily, weekly, monthly, etc (if that exists…let me know).
What I do get is the power of the streak. Watching that number grow each day and the fire to keep it going. You don’t want to see a big number reset to 0 and start again. It’s much easier to keep a big number going than to deal with the feeling of restarting.
It takes a lot of mental energy to get to 1. To get to 1001? Not nearly as much.
Not all conventional wisdom works for everyone
I cannot tell you how many times people have shared conventional wisdom that I’ve tried and failed to follow.
Encouraging grace. “You know you can take a break, right? You don’t have to be so intense. Just start again tomorrow.”
The push to be flexible. “It’s just one day. You can stay up late and sleep in this weekend.”
Or the famous “Just start” to build any new habit.
That just word is anything but. These sound so easy. The folks that created such conventional wisdom were likely not neurospicy. The challenge with these statements is that they assume everyone can follow them successfully. Then, if you struggle, there is added worry that something is wrong with you.
Nope. Nothing wrong. Some of us may need to be very intentional about our habits in a way that doesn’t look like standard advice would assume.
Rebuilding vs keeping the streak alive
A few years ago, I crashed hard. I was on the couch for a week before I figured out what had happened. It was severe burnout and all my coping mechanisms and structure went out the window.
I realized I needed help and we started working on one thing at a time. First sleep, then movement. It took me many months to get back to where I had been prior to that week.
That started an intense awareness of my coping strategies. I had another crash and was gentle with myself. It took more months to get back to some sort of rhythm. The gentle method was probably kinder, but I also know that sleep and movement are key to my mental health in those toughest moments.
It wasn’t until a friend said she was pursuing 10K steps a day for a year that I became aware of streaks. It was in the same year as that second crash, and I already missed some days in February. Knowing I couldn’t get a “perfect year,” I wasn’t all that motivated to start. But on January 1…game on.
Since then, I’ve suffered through Covid, the flu, and surgery. Haven’t missed in over 900 days. I might have been walking slowly on a treadmill for a few minutes at a time, but I got those steps in. Each time I’ve been tempted to miss, I remind myself of how hard it was to get off that couch. I look at that number and I get up anyway.
Do what works for you…without judgment
I’m not suggesting that everyone lives a life based on random numbers or that they go out and start building streaks. What I am suggesting is that we each need to know ourselves well enough to know what works. There are so many books out there about setting and achieving goals or building habits.
None of that works for me.
It doesn’t make me broken. Or rigid. Or uptight. It makes me self-aware.
If 80% of the population operates one way (which I doubt, by the way), great. I’m in the 20% that works differently. Not worse. Differently. So I’m going to do what works for me, and I’ve found streaks to be a strong motivator when I don’t feel like doing the things I need to stay healthy.
When I get an alert in the morning telling me I met my sleep goal of 8 hrs, that feels good. The ding of hitting 10K steps by 8am gives me energy for the rest of the day because I’ve already accomplished one thing I set out to do.
I may look disciplined, but what I am is very aware of what I need to be mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy. To be able to cope with all that the world throws at us every day.
Save the conventional wisdom, as lived experience has provided mine. Let’s have grace for ourselves and others when our needs don’t fit nicely into a book. Maybe replace advice and judgment with curiosity and acceptance. That’s a streak I’d like to try.
