Today I bought donuts. To set the record straight, I don’t know when I last ate a donut. (Before this morning, that is.) I KNOW they’re pure sugar and fat. I know they’re bad for me. I know, I know. And I usually don’t – eat – donuts! Yet, while I was out running errands this morning, my car just up and drove me to the best donut shop in town. What could I do? I was driven to buy donuts.

How’d That Happen?

What happened to my usual resilience – you know my strength to endure in the face of this sneaky little donut-craving??

I like to read. Have since I learned how. Many a summer day, my Mom would kick me out of the house with the admonition, “go outside and enjoy the day” which annoyed the heck out of me as I WAS enjoying the day – reading. I learned to play the game – I’d optimistically smuggle my book out and climb a tree where I thought I couldn’t be seen (I soon learned that my mother had eyes in the back of her head – she KNEW) and continue to indulge my favorite pastime. These days, I mostly enjoy three kinds of reading: educational, self-help, and my fave’, “beach reading”.

Beach reading means storytelling-novels that allow me to escape into a fantasy world far away from my everyday realities. Sometimes these novels are literary works; sometimes they’re hardly worth the paper they’re printed on. Strangely enough, by disappearing into silly stories of make-believe, my optimism is renewed and I can resume my everyday-life refreshed and ready to “get with it”. So I try to keep a ready supply of my “drug of choice” on hand. There’s nothing like a 15 inch stack of paperbacks by my favorite authors to make me feel all’s right with the world!

Anyway (SIGH) …There’s a certain kind of book that makes mischief with my diet. I blame these particular donuts on one particular author who is a master at repeatedly but cleverly, weaving tired, old clichés into his stories. This book was about cops in a small town. Duh! I should have known I was in trouble from the get-go – this is not the first time my car has driven me to the donut shop (hence my intimate knowledge of the BEST of the best donut shops!). But, my usually-dormant sugar-addict conned me: It was only a book, I wasn’t actually eating the donuts for heaven’s sake! I know better. I do. I know that being in the presence of a powerful, make that Very Powerful Temptation, (VPT’s) is folly.

Lesson Learned

Move away from the temptation – STOP reading novels that insist on inserting folk-food into the story line! It’s a resilience strategy that has worked for me in the past and I’m going back to it just as soon as I finish reading this book …And after I eat the rest of the donuts.

Nah, I can bounce back better than that – drastic measures are required! I’m skipping to the last chapter to see how the book ends and the remains of the donuts are already soaking in a bowl of water, it’s too late to weasel out of it.

Have you been ignoring bounce back strategies that have served you well in the past?? How’s that working for you?