The other day I was listening to The School Sucks Podcast and the host brought up the metaphor of health as a bank account.
Physical and mental health decisions either add or subtract from your health. When you make long-term health decisions, you make a deposit. Decisions that might feel good at the moment, but aren’t good in the long term are withdrawals.
You can make withdrawals; eating that burger, staying up late, having a few beers with friends.
You can make deposits; meditating, eating a salad, getting to bed early.
When you make deposits, you improve your ability to make withdrawals in the future. When you make withdrawals you have to pay that back in the future. More sleep or less energy to dedicate to productivity tomorrow.
Many of us don’t give ourselves permission to make withdrawals. So when we do make a withdrawal, we feel guilty, and we say fuck it, let’s spend it all!
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Just because you’re tired and ate an unhealthy dinner doesn’t mean you should stay up late watching tv.
The awe fuck it attitude just results in future pain.
Just because you’ve made a bunch of withdrawals today doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to make a deposit.
When you find yourself with a decision, no matter how many bad decisions you might have made that day, you still have the power to make a good decision at the moment. You don’t need to give it all away. You can still choose to make a deposit.
You can eat a healthy dinner after an unhealthy lunch. You can eat a healthy breakfast after a late night of drinking. And if you don’t meet your exercise plans this week, you can still try to meet them next week.
No matter how many withdrawals you have made, you can still make a deposit right now.
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