Abstainer or Moderator

daily sprout 470

Todays' daily sprout  transcript:

Are you an abstainer or a moderator? This is a great little thing to reflect on I picked up from Gretchen Rubin who is the author of a number of books: The Four Tendencies, The Happiness Project, and Better than Before. Some great books about developing habits, understanding happiness, and our tendencies when we just live our day-to-day life.

Are you an abstainer or a moderator? In a nutshell, what it's talking about is some of us are more comfortable with the all or nothing approach of just doing without completing. For me, I'm an abstainer. When it comes to food, I find it's easier to say I'm just not having any of it. If I'm not gonna have chocolate, I'll have none of it in the house, I will abstain. That is an easier decision that I can live with, that rather than a moderator. My partner, Lesley, she's a moderator. She will find that incredibly stressful and so long as she can have a bar of chocolate, then she can have one piece off, then she would be happy. It would stress her out to completely do without. So we have an abstainer and a moderator living together.

That can be a challenge, but it's about understanding that. I wouldn't settle if there's a bar of chocolate in the house. It would have to be finished. She wouldn't settle if there was no bar of chocolate in the house. How we work that, we have our own agreements on that one, but it's worth recognising what are you because if you're trying to work on something like weight loss or any kind of goal, you may need to shape your strategies more towards abstaining or more towards moderating.

Keep an eye out for the next blog.

Dave

Dave Algeo, Restless Mid-Lifer
'It is never too late to get life back on your terms and have even bigger adventures!'
dave@restlessmidlifer.com