I'm not just my head

My head is brilliant. It knows what the best decisions are.

It knows I shouldn't eat sugar. It knows I should exercise. It knows that one choice is better for me than another.

And still I don't always do it. Neither do I nor anyone else.

Knowing isn't the same as being able

Knowing something doesn't give me, immediately afterwards, the power to put it into practice.

This frustrated me for a long time. If I've already understood, why don't I change? If the information is all there, why do I keep doing the opposite?

The answer is simple and it took me a while to accept it: because I'm not just my head.

I'm a much larger set of things. Emotions, energy, wants, the unconscious, my life history, DNA. A whole lot of things that aren't at my conscious disposal and that also get a vote.

However much my head sometimes knows which is the better choice, and sometimes only thinks it knows, that's no guarantee of anything.

This isn't an excuse

Worth saying, because it's easy to use this idea the wrong way.

I'm not writing this to justify everything I do, or to sit still waiting for things to change on their own.

I'm writing it because understanding this lifts an enormous weight. What's done is done. And from today, with each new bit of awareness, I can keep trying.

Some days it'll go well. Some days it won't go so well. Because I'm not just my head.

What changes

What changes is the relationship with failing.

When I thought I was only my head, every time I didn't do what I knew I should do, I concluded there was something wrong with me. Lack of willpower, lack of character, lack of something.

Now I know there are other parts of me involved, and that those parts also need to be heard, worked with, taken into account.

It isn't easier. But it's truer. And from the truth you can actually work.