Brooke,

I am working on keeping commitments to myself and not deviating from my planned schedule. In the past, I have changed my schedule because I didn’t feel like doing something, or more accurately, I wanted to avoid feeling something. But I’m not doing that anymore and spoiler alert: it is really hard and it feels awful. But it’s actually okay because I can handle feeling awful.

However, my brain is really sneaky about justifying when it is acceptable to alter my schedule. For instance, this morning I got a flat tire while I was driving which was obviously something I had to take care of and altered my plans. No big deal. But there are other instances where I have not truly needed to change plans but my brain seized on any opportunity. The test I have been using is: am I doing this to escape an emotion?

For eating, I know that in order to make sure it’s not emotional, you wait 24 hours and if you still want to eat it then it is planned and okay. Is there something similar for scheduling?

P.S. I’m really excited for scholars in September when we cover planning in depth.