And let’s be fair, most people’s brains are to some degree, stretching the truth much of the time. I can’t tell you how many tasks I’ve put off for an embarrassingly long time because of how hard I thought they’d be only to find when I started them and set a timer, most of them took less than 10 easy minutes.
So after more than five decades you’d think I’d have a solid understanding of this and yet, after Hindi class yesterday I found myself falling for the same old tricks when it came time to go for the bike ride I had intended to do.
I started with all the usual arguments my brain makes this time of year. It was cloudy and 8°C with a wind that made it feel like 6°. Clearly that would be cold and unpleasant (even though last winter I rode in temperatures down to -15°C). It was mid-day and after weeks of riding at 5:30 in the morning I decided there would be tons of traffic. With all the cloud cover it would be gloomy and miserable.
I detoured a bit thinking that maybe a bike ride to a lunch spot would draw me out but all it really did was make me lose time searching for a good place to have lunch with the perfect route to get there – not too much traffic and not too long as I was already getting hungry. I caught myself and made lunch.
But then I spent even more time looking for the perfect route – 30-50 km, low traffic, nothing I’ve done before. Finally, seeing my dithering, Sage all but pushed me out the door. But this time I had a camera and captured video evidence of the disconnect between expectations and reality. I can hear my voice change throughout the video (and inside the change was bigger)
Hopefully now that I even have video evidence I can see through my mind’s tricks.
It happens. Good you have a video evidence. Today I baked a cake after a long, long time .