On Keeping On

I don’t wanna blog today.  And I don't wanna exercise.  Ditto, meditation.  In fact, I don’t wanna do much of anything.  But Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project) has the answer to this funk in her blog post this morning.  Or at least one I can adapt.

Rubin advises, in her weekly video, that we should "sing in the morning."  The advice is her proposed resolution for the week, which is part of her month long focus on attitude.  More applicably, she shares her “thought for the week,” which is this quotation from William James:  

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together.  By regulating the action, which is more under the direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

This relates to the third of Rubin's 12 Personal Commandments, which is "Act the way I want to feel."  Another way of saying this is the old "fake it 'til you make it" aphorism.

So I'm going to act like a blogger (thankfully, not a singing one, at least not today), until I feel like a blogger again.  And I'm going to act like an off-season triathlete, and not like a slug.  And like a person committed to sitting in meditation regularly.  I've already acted like a reasonable parent, an amicable spouse, an enthusiastic child care worker who is also a good Nana, a responsible library patron, and a fledgling novelist.  I still don't feel like singing.  But I begin to see Rubin's point.  And at least I haven't left behind more detritus of my black mood to depress me tomorrow.

Maybe we shouldn't call it "just" going through the motions.