Key Concepts and Action Items

Starting over with a "clean slate" is a way of pretending that our choices don’t have consequences.
You’re not going to be any more committed tomorrow morning (or Monday, or the first of the month) than you are right now. But you are likely to be even further from your goal.
The sooner you correct course, the shorter the distance you will need to travel to get back on track.
Instead of wiping the slate clean, accept whatever is on your current slate as fuel for future growth.

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Transcript

The concept of the Clean Slate is familiar to most chronic dieters. There’s something so appealing about the idea of a fresh start! We draw an imaginary line in the sand, and once we step over that line, we have a brand new story. Whatever came before is magically expunged from history and we start with a perfect, unblemished record.

This is why most new diets start on Monday and why the gym is so crowded on January 2nd. In her book, Better than Before, Gretchen Rubin actually promotes the Clean Slate as one of several habit-forming strategies.

Invoking the Clean Slate may be a great way to get yourself fired up and motivated. But if you’re not careful, there are some ways in which it can actually work against any long-term habit change.

For one thing, the power of the clean slate is also its own greatest weakness–because a shiny new clean slate loses a lot of its motivational power as soon as you spill some ketchup on it. A single missed workout or unplanned cupcake and the whole project falls apart–because your perfect record is no longer perfect.

The illusion of a Clean Slate can also delay course corrections. You may realize halfway through a vacation (or stressful work week, or whatever) that you’ve drifted away from your Weighless habits. Drifting away happens to all of us and it’s not the end of the world. It’s how you handle it and what happens next that truly matters.

The Clean Slate mentality tells us that we need to wait until the vacation (or week, or semester, or whatever) is over to start again fresh. And heck, now that the week is ruined (and soon to be expunged from the record), you might as well go down with all guns blazing, as it were.

The Weighless mindset is the exact opposite. Things are not so black and white for us. Every day has its wins and whiffs. But no matter how many whiffs we’ve logged, our next win is as close as the next choice we make.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s first thing in the morning or an hour before bedtime, whether it’s Tuesday afternoon or Sunday night, or whether you’re on Day 2 or Day 12 of your vacation. One moment of awareness is all you need to gently correct your course. In an instant, you can start implementing some of your Weighless strategies and return to the habits that have been working for you over the past few months.

The sooner you correct course, the shorter the distance you will need to travel to get back on track. And if you need to correct your course multiple times a day, that’s not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. If anything, it’s a sign that you are getting it extra right.

When I was first learning how to meditate, I was doing a form of meditation where you focus on the breath. As soon as you notice that your mind has wandered and you’re thinking about something else, you’re instructed to gently return your attention to the breath. At first, I felt like I couldn’t get through a single inhalation and exhalation without losing my focus, and it was frustrating. It made me feel like I was failing at meditation.

But a wise meditation teacher helped me reframe it as having that many more opportunities to succeed! Every time you notice that your mind has wandered, she suggested, just think, “How wonderful! Another opportunity to be mindful!” Similarly, every opportunity to correct your course is a chance to get better at course correction.

We've talked about the fact that we sometimes have competing (or dueling) desires. We may have momentary desires (such as the desire to have a second piece of pie) that are not aligned with our long-term desire to weigh less, for example. We have to decide whether the momentary gratification of one more piece of pie is more compelling than the benefits we will enjoy by weighing less.

But sometimes, instead of acknowledging that we have to choose between a momentary desire and a long-term goal, it’s tempting to bargain instead. We’ll just give in to this momentary desire, we think, but then we’ll shake it off and start fresh tomorrow, even more committed.

Somehow, in our minds, these two things balance each other out. But when you think about it, this is false logic. The truth is that you’re not actually going to be any more committed tomorrow morning (or Monday, or the first of the month, or whatever) than you are right now. But you might be even further from your goal.

In reality, when it comes to how we treat our bodies and which behaviors we reinforce, there really is no clean slate. You may have turned the page on the calendar and mentally expunged the record. But the consequences of our past choices–whatever they were–always accompany us into the present.

Wiping the slate clean is a way of pretending that our choices don’t have consequences. This might help us avoid some uncomfortable feelings but it doesn’t help us make better choices. In fact, it can make it easier to continue to make bad choices. Because we think “I can always start again tomorrow.” Or next month, or next year, or whatever.

Plus, every time we invoke a Clean Slate, it makes it a little easier to invoke the next one. It’s not all those fresh starts that are doing the damage, of course. It’s all those lapses that we desperately keep trying to erase from the record that are keeping us from moving toward our goal.

Owning our choices may not always be comfortable. But at least it’s honest. When we are willing to acknowledge (gently, and with compassion) that our current reality is the result of choices that we made in the past, it can help us stay in touch with the fact that the choices that we are making right now are shaping our future reality.

Our choices will never be perfect. Fortunately, perfection is not required. We can’t change (or erase) the past. But we can learn from it. And we can embrace each choice as it comes along as an opportunity to build a better future.

Next time you find yourself fantasizing about starting fresh with a clean slate, I’d like to suggest that instead you accept whatever is on your current slate as fuel for future growth. Perhaps it’s worth examining what may have been driving some of those choices that you're so eager to erase from the record. Those insights may help guide you to revisit one or more of the tools in your Weighless toolkit. Or maybe it’s enough simply to focus on making your very next choice a good one.

You may feel more committed when you decide to turn over a fresh leaf. But true commitment is the decision to make the Weighless choice right now. (And, of course, it’s always right now.)

Resources

7 Ways to Reset your Day (Jill Weisenberger)

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