A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Dear Friend,
I was 23 when I liked a salad for the first time. And we’ll come back to that.
But first: How’s your New Year season going? Are you in the honeymoon phase of a New Year’s Resolution? That can be an incredibly happy and instructive time. Personally, I love the New Relationship Energy (NRE) that comes from setting and initially following through on a just-born goal. And at the same time, I know that the longest this chemistry between myself and Doing Certain Chores on Certain Days of the Week (my current goal) will only last until the first wrench gets thrown into my schedule, which will probably happen in the third week of January. In March, I’ll look back wistfully at this time, eyeing the sauce-crusted stovetop and remembering how optimistic I was that every Thursday the kitchen would be spotless.
I tend to advise people not to get too ambitious with a January goal, because Nature is against you in January. It isn’t your fault that it’s still so dark! NRE has some powerful chemistry, but it’s no match for Winter. Winter doesn’t care that you wanted to have six-pack abs by Summer. Winter doesn’t give two figs about anything Summer-related. Winter is going to be cold and dark, and so what if you were going to go for a 45-minute walk at dawn every day? “HAHAHA,” says Winter.
But people make goals anyway, and so do I. I have a pretty good track record with my goals! I often achieve them – this, despite being philosophically anti-productivity, anti-any kind of “hack,” and definitely not a perfectionist. And achieving a goal, or being on the road to achieving one, feels really good, and that good feeling usually makes every part of my life a little easier. Maybe this is not true for you, and in that case, I want to know more about you and the things that DO make you feel better in a long term kind of way, so we can talk more about that at a later date. But in this, the first week of January, I want to tell you my three-pronged method for advancing with your goals. Let’s dive in.
Part one is obvious: you must identify what feels good in your body after you have done it. This is the principle most New Year’s resolutions and diet plans and exercise regimens are based in. You’ll feel amazing after an hour of HIIT, so you must change your routine to integrate an hour of HIIT four times a week. Some more examples: It feels good in your body to have eaten lots of plants and no fried chocolate bars. It feels good in your body to look at your bank account and see that you have paid off your student loans and you have a sufficient nest-egg of savings. It feels good in your body to have finished writing your novel; to have published your novel; to be signing copies of your novel for your scads of adoring fans. (Well, you assume it is. The novelists who do those things look like they feel good, don’t they?) A resolution is about thinking of the thing that would feel the most good, and deciding that, for the next year, you will do the opposite of everything your animal body is programmed to do (to take care of itself right now), and think about Future You instead of Present You. The overall hope is that you will do the thing you hate enough times that you will achieve a coveted Lifestyle Change.
(For the next paragraph, a CW: I’m going to talk fairly candidly about disordered eating.)
I have successfully achieved this kind of Lifestyle Change in the past. By beating Present Me up in the interest of Future Me, I have been able to, for example, eat only raw foods for close to a calendar year. When Present Me became thinner, and people around Present Me started to tell her she looked great, Present Me learned that the pain of almost never eating food that made her truly happy was WORTH IT! But she didn’t want that feeling to ever go away; she hated Past Me, who was fat, gross, and undisciplined. And so, she got more serious about it. She became a person who would not go to parties, because she couldn’t trust herself to not eat the delicious-looking food on whatever food table was bound to be there. She became so obsessed with the food she was eating that she didn’t think about many other things at all! And this, my friend, is what is known as a disorder. Existing only for Future You, as though Present You doesn’t deserve joy because Present You is not good enough as is, is a yellow brick road to all kinds of disorders. I’ve written here about an eating disorder, but people also develop disordered thinking around work, exercise, sleep, relationships, and more.
I’m saying: Your animal body wants you to take care of it now. You are good enough as you are to be enjoying your life. So break your statements in Part One into categories, and then move on to Part Two. (Possible categories might include: vegetables, exercise, sugar, muscles, relationships, finances, writing, etc.) Let’s call those categories Umbrellas, because I like Rihanna.
Part Two: Under each Umbrella (ella, ella, ella), figure out what makes you feel good while you are doing it. This might take some trial and error. If you don’t find that actually doing yoga feels good in the here and now, but does feel good afterwards, then scale it way back. Are you taking hour-long yoga classes that leave you out-of-breath? But when it’s just cat-cow, that part feels nice? Then there you have it: 5 minutes of cat-cow feels good while you’re doing it. The point is to identify a Little Joy. You’re looking for the feeling you got when you were a child and someone gave you a bowl of ice cream. (I’m making some assumptions about the near-universal childhood love of ice cream, but replace that with whatever it was that filled child-you with pleasure for a short period of time.) If you don’t actually like to have a big salad, then what are some plants that are fun to eat? And if you can’t find any, do research! (For plant-eating beginners specifically, I recommend the Instagram account @PlantYou.) Find a picture of a thing that looks delicious, and then make it or order it. WAS it delicious? When you were mindfully eating the food, did you experience ice cream-level joy? Great! You’ve found it.
Here are some suggestions for Little Joys that go with the Umbrellas I listed.
Vegetables: A black bean burrito bowl with cashew queso.
Exercise: Dancing to a song you love.
Sugar: A medjool date with tahini after dinner.
Muscles: Lifting your baby niece up over your head a few times to make her laugh. (Uh, ask her parents first.)
Relationships: Hour-long living room karaoke dates. (Not to be confused with the medjool date from above.)
Finances: Canceling a stressful plan that would have cost money.
Writing: Journaling for five minutes.
To change your life, you have to look forward to something that will satisfy Present You. I know plenty of people who love running, or weight training, or salads. But if that isn’t you yet, entice your inner animal with presents that will lead it down a new path. Make your Little Joys truly little. It’s too easy to not have time for something. You do have time, if the something is small enough. And when you’re engaged in your Little Joy, tune into the part of your body that’s feeling pleasure. You are doing this for yourself. What a nice thing to do.
Which brings me to Part Three: You have to be really planful about getting your Little Joys on the calendar. Don’t trick your animal body by overdoing it; just make sure your Little Joys are non-negotiable, and that you’re doing them at least once a week – and more is better. When it’s time to do your Little Joy, say to yourself something like, “Oh! It’s time for my present!” Or, “Ice cream hour has arrived!” Or, “It’s about to be the best part of the day.” Fall in love with the thing you want more of in your life. And if you can’t, then I have to ask: Is that really the thing for you? Life is very short, and there is so much about it to love. Do you really want to be spending your time committed to something that is only useful to a version of yourself who might never exist?
Falling in love with a regular activity is a good way to form a habit; and habits are the backbone of practice; and practice is the only thing that makes anyone improve at anything. Don’t get me wrong: This method is slow; it’s in it for the long haul. This is the kind of Lifestyle Change that is grounded in pleasure; in making Present You fuller and brighter, and if Future You just happens to benefit, so be it. Let me tell you now about the salad.
I was a brown-and-yellow foods kid. I only wanted pizza, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese, hotdog buns, biscuits, flour tortillas on their own… you get it. People started to comment on my weight with concern when I was nine, and I understood that I was supposed to want to lose weight, and so that was what I wanted. All the magazines I read about dieting were mad for salad. They acted like just eating a salad would instantly shrink you. But I didn’t like salad. I was neutral on pale lettuces (like, butter lettuce) and carrots, but salad dressing was slimy and gross. So I choked down piles of wet lettuce as much as I could, waiting for my magical weight loss transformation, which of course, never came. By the time I got to college, I was furious at salad. I had become a vegan at this point, but I relied on vegan brown-and-yellow foods. (Which in 2004 was, like, toast.) The sole exception to my personal brown foods rule was pan-Asian stir fry, which was full of both vegetables and MSG.
When I graduated from college, I had a roommate who was also vegan, and we cooked a lot of pan-Asian stir fry. She is the one who introduced me to kale, which I found that I loved because it was NOT slimy or limp, but robust and crunchy, and I didn’t think it tasted like much, so when you slathered it with soy sauce and sesame oil, it made for a refreshing part of our weeknight staple. One day, the stove stopped working. My roommate wondered what would happen if we tried the stir fry as a salad, and I decided to be mature and give it a try. Guess what? That kale salad tasted JUST LIKE STIR-FRY, without any heat or anything. “Holy mackerel,” I said (I thought old-fashioned sayings were quirky-in-a-good-way then), “I LOVE THIS SALAD!”
I did love that salad, so I ate it every week. Within two years, I was eating it every day. And then I wanted to experiment. I added other types of greens and vegetables. I changed up the dressings. I learned how incredible a salad could be, and I fell truly in love with the concept of salad. As I write this, kale salad is my number four favorite food, and I don’t know if my girlfriend would like me as much if I didn’t understand salad as well as I do. I was eating a huge Southwest-style kale salad (pictured) as I started writing you this newsletter. I love the amount of vegetables I eat; I think they keep me from getting sick, and they make me feel brighter, happier, more satisfied – all the things. But I didn’t get here because salad was an instant waist-trimmer. I arrived here filled with joy.
Anyway, take this advice or leave it. No matter where you are, remember: what you’re doing is good enough. Present You is worthy of happiness and joy RIGHT NOW. No notes.
Love,
Sophie
PS - You want the good kale salad recipe. I get it. You’re in luck, because in the decade-plus since I first ate it, I have PERFECTED it. Enjoy!
Sophie’s Actually Life-Changing Kale Salad Recipe.
Massage 4 cups of (ideally, multiple types of) kale with a little salt and olive oil, so the leaves turn darker green and limp up a little bit. Shred one carrot and an inch of ginger into the bowl. Cut or dice a handful each of snap peas and bell pepper and put it in the bowl. Mix the dressing: 2 parts rice vinegar, 1 part sesame oil, 1 part tamari, 1-3 cloves of garlic, a tiny bit of sriracha. (Note: for this salad, I usually make 1 part equal to a quarter cup, but I acknowledge that’s a lot of dressing.) Use your fingers to massage the dressing INTO the kale. This will make your fingers burn if you pick your fingernails, but it’s worth it. You want the kale to really sop up the dressing. Top with chopped, toasted cashews.
dear sophie,
thank you for all of this as always.
for the first prong of my response, here's a thing you said that i like, plus a thing that i am going to add, for fun:
YOU: "NRE has some powerful chemistry, but it’s no match for Winter."
ME: "that's true! WINTER has NRE plus it ALSO has WIT! three whole extra letters!"
for the second prong, i will tell you that i really appreciate this:
"Canceling a stressful plan that would have cost money."
in a society that puts such a premium on doing MORE, it is always so valuable to hear the truth that there can be an even greater premium on doing LESS! (depending on what the MORE and LESS are of, of course)
for the third prong, i will say thank you for using the word "three-pronged," because i really like saying "prong," apparently. new resolution! to say "prong" more. i've already done it!
thank you again for all!
love
myq
PS* have you heard of this book: "One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way"
it offers a lot (one small step at a time).
*PS = Prong-Script
This was such a wonderful read! I have JUST begun going to the gym- after years of wanting to but feeling intimidated by the machines, exercises and just the newness of the experience. I was thinking, while reading your post, how much I love exercising in the gym (it has just been two days :D) but I think my present self loves it and maybe my future self will thank me for it. And yes, my bowl of ice cream is a short nap every afternoon, which I almost never deprive myself of. Thank you for this lovely post and reflection that it has ignited.