It has been 41 days since I was last able to contact you. I have failed in my attempt to spur my host body into action. It bought new running shoes and walked for 30 minutes on the treadmill every day for two weeks in the beginning.
It even RAN on the treadmill. It never runs! Granted, it could only run for 60 seconds before gasping and wheezing and slowing back down to a walk for another 10 minutes before trying again, but still: it RAN.
It was eating better, too. Broccoli, salads, something called Quinoa. No more chocolate chip cookie dough for dinner.
Then poof, it stopped getting on the treadmill when it got home in the evening. The broccoli rotted in the cold storage device. Last night, it made chocolate chip cookies.
Clearly I need a new strategy. It read this post about activation energy today, where it learned to focus on the first step of a task, rather than the entire daunting venture, to get itself started. Once it gets started, it is often easier to finish the task than to stop.
I have used this strategy in the past to spur the host body into action, not realizing it was “activation energy.” It thought it was just a sly trick of its subconscious to get moving on something it did not want to do. For example:
Making the bed: I tell it all it has to do is put on the fitted sheet because that is the hard part, especially the last corner. It can wait to do the top sheet, pillow cases, and blankets later because it will be a simple thing to throw them on right before climbing into bed. It falls for it every time. It puts on the fitted sheet then decides to do the pillow cases because they sometimes take extra effort and it may be too tired to do it at bedtime. Throwing on the top sheet and blankets is so easy it feels silly not doing it right then so it will not have to deal with it later. (I win!)
Getting out of bed: I tell it all it has to do is get out of bed and have a cup of tea. It can go back to bed any time it wants to as long as it gets up now to feed the cats and have some tea. Once it is up and around, it never goes back to bed. (It is such a sucker!)
Putting away the clean laundry: I tell it all it has to do it is fold the towels and lay out the hanging clothes on the bed so they will not be wrinkled. It can put it all away later. It is so obsessive-compulsive, it cannot leave things like that knowing it will just have to finish the task later. It also knows cats are drawn to, and must lay upon, anything fabric, thereby distributing cat hair in an even layer upon every horizontal surface in the house. It does not like cat hair on its laundry so it always puts it away every time. (I find it quite easy to manipulate the obsessive-compulsive aspect of this personality.)
For exercise, perhaps I will try the suggestion of simply putting on the running shoes and attaching the MP3 player to its holder on the treadmill and see what happens next. It may work better if I remind it to first put an entree in the oven and broccoli in the steamer.
I know how it loves to multi-task.
